AbstractWe study the approximation properties of linear combinations of the so-called Phillips operators, which can be considered as genuine Szász-Mirakjan-Durrmeyer operators. As main result, we prove a direct estimate for the rate of approximation of bounded continuous functions f E C[0,x), measured in C|\[0,x)-norm and thus generalizing the results, proved earlier by Gupta, Agrawal, and Gairola in [3]. Our estimates rely on the recent results, obtained in the joint works of M. Heilmann and the author-[10, 11]