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Philips
The Dutch company Philips was one of the first manufacturers of radio sets. The company had always focused on the consumer market, the few commercial communication receivers were not successful, the various world receivers never were really popular.
Company history
The history of the Dutch company Philips goeas back to 1891 when N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken was founded as an incandescent lamp factory; in 1903 Philips was already the fourth largest incandescent lamp factory in Europe. In 1917 Philips started to manufacture electron tubes. Later, Philips was not only one of the first manufacturers of electronic components but also one of the first companies to mass-produce complete radio sets; by 1932, the group had already produced one million radio receivers.
Philips was always focused on the consumer market; in the commercial sector, the few communications receivers were almost as unsuccessful as the various all wave receivers. The company always lacked a concept for the development of popular shortwave receivers. The sets were often technically outdated when they appeared on the market and could not meet the expectations of the listeners raised by the brochures.
The tabletop receiver AL-990, which appeared in 1982, has some similarities with the Grundig Satellit 1400 from 1980, the portable double conversion set in conventional technology has a digital frequency counter, SSB reception is possible by means of BFO. The poor frequency stability frequently led to differences between the actual operation frequency and the frequency shown on the digital display, only mediocre sensitivity. Smaller in size was the D 2924, a microprocessor-controlled portable receiver, which had to compete with Sony's ICF-2001, which was released two years earlier. But the D 2924 covered only the 49 - 19 m range on shortwaves and did not receive SSB signals either.
In 1985, Philips launched two new receivers, the D 2935 portable set with a membrane keypad and the D 2999 tabletop receiver, which did cost twice as much and had similar performance on the bands. The D 2999 with its impressive front panel with a large digital frequency display & S-meter unfortunately could not keep up with its competitors in terms of sensitivity, selectivity and especially in terms of mirror frequency rejection. But listening to the international European shortwave stations was pleasant thanks to the good audio quality.