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News Release

January 29, 1998

Hitachi Forms Information Media Systems Group to Strengthen Its Multimedia Business

Hitachi, Ltd. today announced a reorganization of its Information Systems Group and Consumer Products & Information Media Systems Group into three new groups, the new groups will be Information Systems Group, Information Media Systems Group and Consumer Products Group. This reorganization change will make Hitachi's business groups from current four groups to five groups: Power & Industrial Systems Group, Information Systems Group, Information Media Systems Group and Consumer Products Group and Electronics Components Group.

Through this change, Hitachi aims to strengthen its multimedia business as well as its information systems business in the corporate market. The Consumer Products Group will focus on audio-visual products and home appliances. The organization change will become effective February 21, 1998.

The digitization of information, communication and broadcasting together with the spread of the Internet and multimedia technology is speeding up the networking of corporations, homes and society as a whole. Due to this, multimedia technology that has been advancing mainly in the corporate market is now spreading in the SOHO and other personal-use applications sectors, creating a new market.

The Information Media Systems Group is being established to cope with demand from this multimedia market that is expected to expand rapidly and has diversified customers ranging from corporate to personal customers. The group will be formed by merging the personal computer operation of the Information Systems Group and multimedia products operation of the Consumer Products and Information Media Systems Group, respectively. By unifying the operations from product development to marketing, Hitachi will be able to speed-up the introduction of new products and to build global marketing strategies. Hitachi aims to provide products that will become de-facto standards in the market by converging its key technologies in the multimedia field such as computers, DVD, MPEG, SuperH(TM) microprocessor, progressive LSI and All Format Decoder (AFD), together with display technology such as Super TFT LCD and Plasma display.

The new Information Systems Group will focus its resources on information systems operations for the business market. This includes systems integration of enterprise systems and service provider business such as multimedia content business and business media service for inter-corporate electronic commerce (EC) transactions as well as development and marketing of high-end servers and computer peripherals.

The Consumer Products Group will encompass conventional home appliances, an area in which Hitachi is already providing a number of leading products to the market. With new opportunities being created by the move toward energy saving, environmentally friendly products and by the digitization of broadcasting formats, Hitachi will continue to focus on developing competitive products by utilizing its related technology.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1996 (ending March 31, 1997) consolidated sales of 8,523 billion yen. The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi 's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.

WRITTEN BY Secretary's Office
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