Philips Pro Display Division Re-Brands As PPDS

January 15, 2021 by Dave Haynes

The professional display solutions side of electronics giant Philips has been re-branded as Philips Professional Display Solutions, or PPDS. There is a new logo, look and website at ppds.com, and a new tagline – powering evolution.

The company explains the just-announced change:

Over the past two decades, PPDS has rapidly evolved from a position of being a new entrant in an already highly competitive and crowded market to quickly becoming an established brand of choice for many of the world’s leading businesses and organizations.

With its full range of Philips professional display solutions (including digital signage, LED displays and professional TVs all built in-house in its purpose-designed manufacturing facilities in both Europe and China), coupled with a world-leading and enviable R&D team, PPDS is a brand recognised for providing dedicated, world-first, industry influencing solutions and services to customers across all business sectors, including hospitality, corporate, retail, education and healthcare, among others.

The company also stresses this is more than just a marketing exercise:

PPDS marks an evolution for the organisation, reflecting its continued strategy for strong market growth and positioning it as forward-thinking business that is supportive of its customers, as well as of the industry as a whole.

As part of that new brand strategy, PPDS is now accelerating its core strategic business streams, to provide even more value to the AV channel and to their customers. These include:

• to bring more advanced, innovative and timely total solutions, rather than simply displays, to customers, when they need them most. Harnessing its growing and enviable third-party partnership network – demonstrated clearly in 2020 with the PeopleCount, safer social distancing displays, including solution options from both Bosch and NowSignage;
• to facilitate access to global markets for customers, with a full, global product and solution portfolio, backed by a one-stop approach and a single point of contact, regardless of location or geographical reach (ie multiple national or international footprints);
• to lead from the front in driving and supporting environmental consciousness and sustainability in the industry, and to reduce unnecessary waste, whether it’s paper-based or electrical, both internally and for customers.

Interesting step. Philips is known and PPDS is a mouthful to say. My gut tells me it will take a while for PPDS to catch on and lotsa people in the company and outside will just continue to say Philips, or add that after the people they’re talking to go cross-eyed when told of PPDS.

For the folks who work there, this will not be all that unmanageable because they’d already be accustomed to the somewhat unusual set-up of the company. It operates under a license from the Dutch firm Phillips, with the real operating entity behind the screen business being Top Victory Electronics, a Taiwanese company.

So they’ve been doing the “we’re Philips, but we’re not …” thing for 15-plus years.