Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) announced that it plans to have its group of companies invest a total of about ¥10 billion yen (US$95.99 million) annually in basic research to accelerate the development of promising new areas such as fuel cells and nanotechnology. Hitachi will have its group firms fund research into new technologies with mid-term to long-term potential based on such factors as sales.
Besides fuel cells and nanotechnology, Hitachi group firms will bolster research in fields such as biotechnology and semiconductor processing. After struggling with poor earnings, the proportion of its research and development spending that is directly connected to new products in recent years has been growing, while its budget for developing next-generation technologies has been shrinking.
