AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Philips did not on Monday rule out a sale of its TV business, which is suffering from low margins, but said it would for now focus on being more selective in what products it offers where. Philips Chief Executive Gerard Kleisterlee told a news conference that the business would follow the example of the domestic appliances division that only offers products in stores and markets where it can generate sufficient margins.

The company is suffering tough competition, especially in the United States, from low-cost rivals such as Taiwanese Amtran’s best-selling Vizio TV brand. Philips would go for “higher margins, at whatever sales level the higher margins will come”, Kleisterlee said. The company, for instance, does not sell toasters or water kettles in the United States because it cannot generate the margins it wants there, Kleisterlee said.

He explicitly did not rule out selling the TV business, saying Philips would look at all “feasible options”. Kevin Lewis, the strategy chief of Philips’ new Consumer Lifestyle division, told Reuters earlier this month that north America was a “brutally competitive market”, especially for TVs.

Philips rolled out its new “Aurea” TV set with much fanfare at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin last year, hoping the flat-panel TV that creates a glow of color around the set would command higher margins than ordinary TVs. Yet televisions generate the lowest margins in Philips’ consumer electronics business, which already has by far the lowest core earnings margins of the group at around 3 percent.

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