Philips into two main divisions: Philips Consumer health and well-being (formerly Philips Consumer Electronics and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care) and Philips Professional Healthcare (formerly Philips Medical Systems). The lighting division was spun off as a separate company, Signify N.V. (formerly Philips Lighting prior to 2018). The company started making electric shavers in 1939 under the Philishave brand, and post-war they developed the Compact Cassette format and co-developed the Compact Disc format with Sony, as well as numerous other technologies. As of 2012, Philips was the largest manufacturer of lighting in the world as measured by applicable revenues. Philips has
Philips Computers had and has moderate success selling peripherals such as mice, keyboards and optical devices. Philips also sold and sells computer media such as diskettes and optical media (CD)s. Philips also developed the CD-i standard but it flopped. Another experimental product was the , based on Intel's 80186. It also flopped. Philips PCs were mostly equipped with motherboards designed by Philips Home Electronics in Montreal, Canada. In the late 1990s Philips Pentium PCs were sold based on generic components and cases. These were not proprietarily designed and produced. Philips had a subsidiary that sold the PCs under the Vendex brand: HeadStart.