Hitachi Ltd, currently doing only $3,500m of its $58,390m total in Europe (the Wall Street Journal actually says $3.5m, but that must be three orders of magnitude out because you don’t get much change from $3.5m for one mid-size mainframe), wants to forge alliances to increase its European business, and is stomping the continent looking for alliances: it has been talking with Siemens AG about semiconductors and environmental technology and Fiat SpA about automotive components; it also opened its $51m disk drive plant near Orleans yesterday and looks for average sales of $5m a month in the first year.
