Analysing the firm's brand image is quite beneficial when looking at the launching of a new product. It helps to give some information of the Philips Company to the consumer. This could be information such as the reputation of the company or its dominance in a particular market. This allows a judgment to be made on whether the company has the brand loyalty, finance and technological facilities in which to produce a new product and assure fulfilment.
Philips is a PLC (Public limited company). This is a business, in which anyone can buy and maintain shares. This shows that Philips are a big company and this gives the company an advantage of raising large amounts of money by issuing more shares so if they decide to release a console they can raise a huge amount of money to finance the development of the console. The promotion and advertising can be financed and banks are more likely to lend money to the business as they know that Philips are a big company that can probably pay back loans in the long term so this can be used to finance the console too. I think that as Philips are a PLC and are technologically advanced they have an advantage of covering research and developmental costs and also start up costs. Having experience in technology e.g. TV's, cameras etc would help aid them in producing a high quality product and possibly establish success. In addition the life cycle of the average games console is becoming shorter therefore reducing the time to cover R&D costs through sales revenue. There would be some risk in this for a new console, it would have to make as much revenue as possible and quickly.
The strength of Philips is that their sales are rising each year in 1994, Their sales were 52.4 billions of guilder's by 98 they had risen to 67.1 billions of guilder's the sales rose by 25% this shows that the company are getting bigger and also making progress year by year. (UK snapshots).