Phoebus cartel

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The Phoebus cartel was a cartel of, among others, Osram, Phillips and General Electric ^[1] from December 23, 1924 until 1939^[2] that existed to control the manufacture and sale of light bulbs.

The cartel certainly seems to have stopped competition in the light bulb industry for some years, and has been accused of preventing technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting light bulbs. However, the Phoebus cartel is also featured in fictionalized form as a central plot element in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, which has led some to blurring of fact and fiction.

Phoebus was officially a Swiss corporation named "Phoebus S.A. Compagnie Industrielle pour la Developpement de l’Eclairage".

1 Members
2 Purpose
3 Demise
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Members

Osram, Phillips, Tungsram, Associated Electrical Industries, Compagnie des Lampes, International General Electric, and the GE Overseas Group were members of the phoebus cartel. They owned shares in the Swiss corporation proportional to their lamp sales.

[edit] Purpose

The cartel served as a convenient way to lower costs and decrease the life expectancy of light bulbs, while at the same time hiking prices, without fear of competition. Standardisation of Lightbulbs was another side-effect of the cartel.

The Phoebus Cartel divided the world’s lamp markets into three categories:

home territories, the home country of individual manufacturers
British overseas territories, under control of Associated Electrical Industries, Osram, Phillips, and Tungsram
common territory, the rest of the world

[edit] Demise

In the late twenties a Swedish-Danish-Norwegian union of companies began planning an independent manufacturing center. Economic and Legal threats by Phoebus did not achieve the desired effect, and in 1931 the Scandinavians produced and sold lamps at a considerably lower price than Phoebus.

With the General Electric in 1939 the end of Phoebus was imminent.