Introducing Philips hue: The World's Smartest LED bulb, Marking a New Era in Home Lighting

LONDON, October 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

• Available at Apple stores from October 30th
• Enables you to control light wirelessly, create and personalise light with an app on your smartphone or tablet

Building on its innovation capabilities, today Philips unveils hue, the world's smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue signals a new era in home lighting both in the way we think about and experience light in our homes. It allows you to create and control the light using your smartphone or tablet. Bringing endless possibilities to help you get creative and help you personalise your lighting to suit yours and your family's lifestyle, Philips hue is available exclusively from Apple stores from 30^th October. A starter pack includes three bulbs^[1] that simply screw into your existing lamps, and a bridge that you plug into your home Wi-Fi router. Simply download the hue app to start experiencing light in a completely new way.

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Philips hue can be setup in minutes. The intuitive app allows you to remotely control your home lighting to help secure your home, personalise your home lighting experience with custom settings and program timers to help manage your daily schedules, all through the convenience of a smart device. An intuitive and seamless system, Philips hue is upgradeable and future-proof, with the potential for more features to be downloaded and enjoyed in the future.

With its high quality energy-saving LED light, Philips hue allows you to tune shades of white light or create any colour. In addition, Philips hue can:

• Save your favourite light scenes for each room or time of day and recall them in an instant
• Use any photo on your phone as a colour palette to paint your room with light and bring your memories back to life
• Tune white light from warm candlelight to vibrant, cool white light
• Create ambience or complement your decor with the colours of the rainbow
• Control and monitor your lights remotely when not at home for security and peace of mind
• Set timers to help manage your daily routine
• Let light wake you up refreshed or help your loved ones fall asleep

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1. E26 or E27 cap

The app for Philips' hue also features expert LightRecipes: four pre-programmed lighting settings based on Philips' research around the biological effects that lighting has on the body.  These scenarios adjust bulbs to the optimum shade and brightness of white light to help you relax, read, concentrate or energise.

Jeroen de Waal, Head of Marketing & Strategy at Philips Lighting commented:  "Philips hue is a game-changer in lighting - a completely new way to experience and interact with light. In the way phones, media and entertainment have been revolutionised by digital technology, now we can also personalise light and enjoy limitless applications.  Philips continues to redefine the possibilities of LED technology, and hue pushes the boundaries even more, not only in offering great light quality, but in how lighting can be digitised and integrated with our world to further simplify and enhance our lives."  

In home tests conducted in New York, Berlin and Shanghai, users highlighted hue's great quality light, programmable timers and the fact they could control their lighting from outside the home as features they most appreciated.  Moreover, consumers liked the ability to save personal light settings and recreate them at the touch of a button as well as the convenience of managing their lighting from their mobile device.

Philips is opening up the hue app to the developer community and has created an open source platform at http://www.meethue.com  inviting developers to explore the app and unleash even more possibilities to show what light can do to enhance your life. You can share light scenes or get inspired on the meethue.com community site. Philips hue uses the open ZigBee Light Link standard so that it can be integrated with other ZigBee certified systems.

Building on the success of its AmbiLight experience, Philips is developing future product features, such as allowing hue to integrate with other media including sound and video.  Philips is also working on features such as geo-location services, allowing hue to sense when you are close to home and automatically turn on the lights, or turn them off when you leave.  

Philips hue is available only from Apple stores and Apple.com for £179. To find out more, visit http://www.meethue.com.

Product information:

The Philips hue introduction pack  includes:

• 3 hue light bulbs of 600 lumen (50Watt equivalent)
• Each hue light bulb covers all shades of white, from warm white light to cold with light, and a wide variety of color. Each hue light bulb uses 80% less power than a traditional light bulb.
• A hue bridge to easily set up your lighting network
• A power supply for the hue bridge
• A LAN cable to connect the hue bridge to your router
• A download instruction for the app
• Note: the hue introduction pack can be enlarged with up to 50 individual hue bulbs
• RRP £179

 The Philips hue bulb individual pack  includes:

• 1 hue light bulb of 600 lumen
• Note: the individual hue bulb is an extension of the hue introduction pack; you need the hue introduction pack and its hue bridge to operate this individual hue bulb.
• You can connect 50 hue individual bulbs to the hue bridge
• RRP : £49

About Royal Philips Electronics

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a diversified health and well-being company, focused on improving people's lives through timely innovations. As a world leader in healthcare, lifestyle and lighting, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights and the brand promise of "sense and simplicity." Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 122,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 22.6 billion in 2011, the company is a market leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as lifestyle products for personal well-being and pleasure with strong leadership positions in male shaving and grooming, portable entertainment and oral healthcare. News from Philips is located at http://www.philips.com/newscenter.

About ZigBee Light Link

ZigBee Light Link gives the lighting industry a global standard for interoperable and very easy-to-use consumer lighting and control products. It allows consumers to gain wireless control over all their LED fixtures, light bulbs, timers, remotes and switches. Products using this standard will let consumers change lighting remotely to reflect ambiance, task or season, all while managing energy use and making their homes greener.

Products built using this standard are as easy-to-use as a common dimmer switch. The standard does not require any special devices to coordinate with the lighting network, making it both easy and intuitive for consumers to use every day. Plus, it makes adding or even removing products to the lighting network a quick and easy. ZigBee Light Link products earning the ZigBee Certified seal are the industry's only networked consumer lighting products offering simplicity and interoperability.

Since ZigBee Light Link is a ZigBee standard, lighting products will interoperate effortlessly with products using other ZigBee standards already in consumers' homes, including ZigBee Home Automation, ZigBee Input Device, ZigBee Remote Control and ZigBee Health Care.

Leading home lighting solution manufacturers who contributed their expertise to the development of ZigBee Light Link, including GE, Greenwave, OSRAM Sylvania and Philips.