() is a Japanese
multinational conglomerate company headquartered in
Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It is the parent company of the Hitachi Group (''Hitachi Gurūpu'') and had formed part of the
Nissan ''zaibatsu'' and later
DKB Group of companies before DKB merged into the
Mizuho Financial Group. As of 2020, Hitachi conducts business ranging from
IT, including
AI, the
Internet of Things, and
big data, to
infrastructure.
Hitachi is listed on the
Tokyo Stock Exchange and
Nagoya Stock Exchange and its Tokyo listing is a constituent of the
Nikkei 225 and
TOPIX Core30 indices. It is ranked 38th in the 2012
Fortune Global 500 and 129th in the 2012
Forbes Global 2000.
History
Hitachi was founded in 1910 by electrical engineer
Namihei Odaira in
Ibaraki Prefecture. The company's first product was Japan's first
induction motor, initially developed for use in
copper mining.
The company began as an in-house venture of
Fusanosuke Kuhara's mining company in
Hitachi, Ibaraki. Odaira moved headquarters to
Tokyo in 1918. Odaira coined the company's
toponymic name by superimposing two ''
kanji'' characters: ''hi'' meaning "sun" and ''tachi'' meaning "rise".
World War II had a significant impact on the company with many of its factories being destroyed by Allied bombing raids, and discord after the war. Founder Odaira was removed from the company
and
Hitachi Zosen Corporation was spun out. Hitachi's reconstruction efforts after the war were hindered by a labor strike in 1950. Meanwhile, Hitachi went public in 1949.
Hitachi America, Ltd. was established in 1959.
The Soviet Union started to produce air conditioners in 1975. The
Baku factory was established under the license of Japanese company Hitachi. Volumes of production of air conditioners in the USSR were small, about 500,000 per year. However air conditioners were a matter of great pride. Mainly window air conditioners were produced. Most of the output was exported.
Hitachi Europe, Ltd. was established in 1982.
From 2006 to 2010, Hitachi lost US$12.5 billion, the largest corporate loss in Japanese history. This prompted Hitachi to restructure and sell a number of divisions and businesses, a process that is expected to finish in 2021.
In March 2011, Hitachi agreed to sell its
hard disk drive subsidiary,
HGST, to
Western Digital for a combination of cash and shares worth US$4.3 billion. Due to concerns of a duopoly of WD and
Seagate Technology by the EU Commission and the
Federal Trade Commission, Hitachi's 3.5" HDD division was sold to
Toshiba. The transaction was completed in March 2012.
In January 2012, Hitachi announced it would stop producing televisions in Japan. In September 2012, Hitachi announced that it had invented a long-term data solution out of
quartz glass that was capable of preserving information for millions of years. In October 2012, Hitachi agreed to acquire the United Kingdom-based nuclear energy company
Horizon Nuclear Power, which plans to construct up to six nuclear power plants in the UK, from
E.ON and
RWE for £700 million. In November 2012, Hitachi and
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries agreed to merge their thermal power generation businesses into a joint venture to be owned 65% by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and 35% by Hitachi.
The joint venture named Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) began operations in February 2014.
In October 2015, Hitachi completed a deal with
Johnson Controls to form a joint-venture that would takeover Hitachi's HVAC business. Hitachi maintained a 40% stake of the resulting company, Johnson Controls-Hitachi Air Conditioning. In May 2016, Hitachi announced it was investing $2.8 billion into its
IoT interests.
Following the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 and the extended temporary closure of most Japanese nuclear plants, Hitachi's nuclear business became unprofitable and in 2016 Hitachi CEO Toshiaki Higashihara argued Japan should consider a merger of the various competing nuclear businesses.
Hitachi is taking for 2016 an estimated ¥65 billion write-off in value of a
SILEX technology laser
uranium enrichment joint venture with
General Electric.
In February 2017, Hitachi and
Honda announced a partnership to develop, produce and sell motors for electric vehicles. Also in 2017, private equity firm
KKR bought Hitachi Kokusai's (itself a subsidiary of Hitachi) semiconductor equipment division, becoming Kokusai Electric. In 2019,
Applied Materials announced that it would acquire Kokusai Electric from KKR for US$2.2 billion.
In 2018, Hitachi stopped selling televisions in Japan because its market share had dropped to 1%, opting to sell Sony TVs through its existing dealer network.
On March 14, 2018,
Zoomdata announced its partnership with Hitachi INS Software to help develop big data analytics market in Japan.
In December 2018, Hitachi Ltd. announced it would take over 80% of
ABB Ltd.'s power grid division for $6.4 billion renaming it Hitachi-ABB Power Grids.
From 2008 to 2018, Hitachi has reduced the number of its listed group companies and consolidated subdiaries in Japan from 22 to 4 and around 400 to 202, respectively, through restructuring and sell-offs. It plans to become a company specializing in IT and infrastructure maintenance in the near future.
In 2019, Hitachi sold its medical imaging business to
Fujifilm for US$1.7 billion.
Showa Denko bought
Hitachi Chemical from Hitachi and other shareholders, at US$42.97 per share. Until then, Hitachi Chemical had been considered to be a core unit of the group. Hitachi also suspended the
ABWR development by its British subsidiary
Horizon Nuclear Power as it did not provide an adequate "economic rationality as a private enterprise" to proceed.
In October 2019, the talks between
Honda and Hitachi to consolidate their four automotive parts businesses,
Showa,
Nissin and
Keihin of the former and the latter's Hitachi Automotive Systems, have reportedly begun, resulting in the creation of a "mega supplier" named Hitachi Astemo incorporated in January 2021.
In September 2020, Hitachi pulled the plug on plans to create nuclear power plants in Gloucestershire and Wales due to issues with funding due to the impact of
COVID-19. In the same month, Hitachi Capital agreed to be bought by its second-largest shareholder, business partner, and former rival
Mitsubishi UFJ Lease, which has invested in the Hitachi subsidiary in 2016.
In November 2020, it announced that Hitachi Metals and
Hitachi Construction Machinery, both being some of the last remaining listed subsidiaries, will likely be detached from the group according to the restructuring plan. In December, Hitachi sold a 60% stake in its overseas home appliance business to Turkish
Arcelik for US$300 million.
Products and services
Automotive systems

* Car Information Systems
* Drive Control
* Electric Powertrain Systems
* Engine Management Systems
Construction machinery

* Hydraulic Excavators
* Forestry Equipment
* Mechanical & Hydraulic Cranes
* Mining Dump Trucks
* Crawler Dump trucks
* Wheel Loaders
Defense systems
*
Military vehicles
*
Vetronics
*
Crisis management
*
C4I systems
* Satellite image processing systems
* Social Infrastructure
security business (in coordination with Hitachi's Infrastructure Systems Group)
*
Electric propulsion technology
*
Electro-mechanical systems (including some
robotics research & development)
* Advanced Combat Infantry Equipment System
CIES(
JSDF) - Primary contractor
Digital media and consumer products

*
Air conditioning equipment - jointly with
Johnson Controls
*
Hitachi Magic Wand
*
Optical disc drives - jointly with optical disc drive division of
LG as
Hitachi-LG Data Storage
* White goods (
refrigerators,
washing machines, etc.) - majority stake of ex-Japan business sold to
Arcelik.
Electronic systems and equipment
* Test and measurement equipment
*
Particle therapy equipment
*
Cell culture equipment
Advanced materials
* Specialty steels
* Wires and cables
Information and telecommunication systems
*
ATMs
*
Servers
*
Disk array subsystems
*
Data storage and
analytics solutions
**
Virtual Storage Platform
*
Internet of Things
** Hitachi Lumada
*
Mainframe computer operating system
*
Software
*
Outsourcing services
*
Telecommunications equipment
Power systems
*
Nuclear and
hydrogen power generation systems
*
Power Grids
Social infrastructure and industrial systems

*
Elevators
*
Escalators
* Industrial machinery and plants
* Railway vehicles and systems
**
Hitachi A-train
Others
* Logistics
* Property management
Subsidiaries
Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi which provides hardware, software and services to help companies manage their digital data. Its flagship products are the
Virtual Storage Platform (for enterprise storage), Hitachi Unified Storage VM for large-sized companies, Hitachi Unified Storage for small and mid-sized companies, Hitachi Content Platform (archiving and cloud architecture), Hitachi Command Suite (for storage management), Hitachi TrueCopy and Hitachi Universal Replicator (for remote replication), and the Hitachi NAS Platform.
Since September 19, 2017, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has become part of Hitachi Vantara, a new company that unifies the operations of Pentaho, Hitachi Data Systems and Hitachi Insight Group. The company name "Hitachi Data Systems" (HDS) and its logo is no longer used in the market.
Hitachi Consulting, the group's international management and technology consulting subsidiary with headquarters in Dallas, Texas, was integrated with Hitachi Vantara in 2019.
Hitachi Metals
Among other things, Hitachi Metals supplies materials for aircraft engines and fuselage components (e.g. landing gear), along with finished components for same and other aerospace applications. It also provides materials, components and tools for the automotive and electronics industries. Among the Hitachi Metals facilities is Hitachi Metal Yasugi Works or Tatara Works, one of the oldest furnaces in Japan, famously featured as a main backdrop in ''
Princess Mononoke'', a Japanese animation film set in the
Muromachi period.
As of September 2020, Hitachi Metals is set to be divested as part of the long-term restructuring plan being executed by the group.
Hitachi Rail

Hitachi Rail is the
rolling stock manufacturing division of Hitachi.
The rail division delivered 120 CQ311 series railcars to
MARTA from 1984 to 1988.
Hitachi markets a general-purpose train known as the "
A-train", which uses
double-skin,
friction-stir-welded aluminium body construction.
Hitachi's products have included the designing and manufacturing of many
Shinkansen models, including the
N700 Series Shinkansen.
On February 24, 2015, Hitachi agreed to purchase the Italian rolling stock manufacturer
AnsaldoBreda and acquire
Finmeccanica's stake in
Ansaldo STS, the
railway signaling division of
Finmeccanica The purchase was completed later that year,
at which point the company was renamed as
Hitachi Rail Italy. Since then, Hitachi has obtained a majority stake in Ansaldo STS.
Hitachi Monorail builds monorail systems with 10 built to date.
In July 2020, Hitachi signed an exclusive agreement with Hyperdrive, a UK-based lithium-ion battery company, to bring battery-powered trains to the country.
Hitachi Astemo
Hitachi Astemo, which stands for "Advanced Sustainable Technologies for Mobility", is a 67-33 joint venture between Hitachi and
Honda, which merged their four auto parts affiliates and division, the latter's three
keiretsu companies
Showa Corporation,
Keihin Corporation, and
Nissin Kogyo, and the former's wholly owned Hitachi Automotive Systems, to be better equipped for the changing car market environment, frequently represented as CASE, for which they will integrate their assets to accelerate development of new technology and software.
Hitachi Astemo is considered a "mega supplier", as annual sales of the four predecessors combined stood at $17 billion, placing it as the second largest among the compatriot auto suppliers.
Other subsidiaries
The rest of the group companies include:
*Hitachi High-tech
*
Hitachi Construction Machinery
**
Hitachi Construction Machinery (Europe)
*
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (co-owned by
General Electric)
*Hitachi Global Life Solutions - Selling home appliances except
audiovisual products.
*
Johnson Controls-Hitachi Air Conditioning - A/C business majority-owned by Johnson Controls since 2015.
*Hitachi Digital Media Group - Selling electronic products including
video projectors under its brand name.
*Hitachi Plant Technologies - Engaging in the design, development, manufacture, sale, servicing, and execution of social and industrial infrastructure machinery,
mechatronics, air-conditioning systems, industrial plants, and energy plant equipment in Asia and internationally.
*Hitachi Communication Technologies America - Providing communications products and services for the telecommunications, cable TV, utility, enterprise, industrial and other markets.
*Hitachi Solutions America - A consulting firm and systems integrator focusing primarily on
Microsoft Dynamics. Hitachi Solutions America acquired
Ignify, a Microsoft Dynamics Solution provider, in December 2015.
*Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems - producing industrial automation systems and equipment.
*Hitachi Transport System - providing one-stop logistics services.
*Hitachi
ABB Power Grids
Discontinued or divested businesses
Hitachi Capital
*
Leasing
* Loan guarantees
* Invoice finance
* Consumer finance (personal and retail)
* Business finance
Bought by
Mitsubishi, it had been the group's financial business arm.
Hitachi Works
Hitachi Works consists of three factories: Kaigan Works, Yamate Works, and Rinkai Works. Yamate Works, the oldest of the three factories, started operation in 1910 by
Namihei Odaira as an electrical equipment repair and manufacturing facility. This facility was named Hitachi, after the Hitachi Mine near
Hitachi, Ibaraki.
Spin-off entities from Hitachi Works include
Hitachi Cable (1956) and Hitachi Canadian Industries (1988).
As Hitachi pulled out of MHPS and handed over the control to
MHI, Hitachi Works was also transferred, becoming part of Mitsubishi Power.
Others
Other former businesses Hitachi had had include the following:
*Aircraft
**
Hitachi T.2
**
Hitachi TR.2
* Aircraft Engines
**
Hitachi Hatsukaze
*
Hitachi Zosen
** Ships - Business merged with the shipbuilding operation of
NKK corporation to form
Universal Shipbuilding Corporation
* Displays
**
Plasma and
LCD Televisions - Ceased production
** Small LCDs - Divested to be part of
Japan Display
**
Projectors - Sold to
Maxell
* Memory chips - Spun off to be part of
Elpida Memory
*System LSIs - Spun off to be part of
Renesas Technology
*
Personal computers - Ceased production
* Mobile phones - Merged with
Casio's cellphone manufacturing business, then absorbed into
NEC Mobile Communications
* Batteries - Sold to Maxell
* Drilling instruments (Hitachi Via Mechanics) - Sold to The Longreach Group
* Hard disk drives - Separated division for this product line as
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, then HGST was purchased by
Western Digital
*
Mainframe computer hardware - Stopped exporting in 2000; Ceased production in 2017 to focus on the operating system business.
*Hitachi Kokusai Electric - Sold to
KKR
**Telecommunication equipment
**
Chemical vapor deposition equipment
*
Power tools (Hitachi Koki) - Sold to KKR and renamed
Hikoki
*
Car navigation system (Clarion) - Sold to
Faurecia
*
Wind turbines - Ceased production
*
Chemical products (Hitachi Chemical) - Sold to
Showa Denko and renamed Showa Denko Materials
*
Medical diagnostic equipment - Sold to
Fujifilm
*
Thermal power generation system (
Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems) - Shares held by Hitachi transferred to Mitsubishi
Philanthropy
In August 2011, it was announced that Hitachi would donate an electron microscope to each of five universities in Indonesia (the
University of North Sumatra in
Medan, the
Indonesian Christian University in
Jakarta,
Padjadjaran University in
Bandung,
General Soedirman University in
Purwokerto and
Muhammadiyah University in
Malang).
See also
*
ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)
Notes
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Category:Japanese companies established in 1910
Category:Aircraft engine manufacturers of Japan
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Category:Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
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