Osram plans to stay the course on R&D and acquisitions

To build on its base as the second-largest player in an industry that's expected to grow 44 percent to $94.4 billion by 2016, Osram Sylvania will continue acquiring other lighting companies and pumping millions into R&D. According to a Reuters report, Wolfgang Dehen, Osram's CEO, said the company would continue spending an average of 5.5 percent of sales on R&D, slightly less than what market leader Royal Philips Electronics NV spends annually on R&D. The Reuters report said Dehen told reporters at a recent press conference in Munich, “The lighting business will see dramatic changes like we've not seen in the past 30 years. If you look at what we did in the past, that's going to be a good indicator going forward.”