HDS Geek Day 0.9 – Yes, Hitachi Makes That. No, Seriously.
One of the most memorable pairing of words for everyone at HDS Geek Day came on Wednesday morning from Michael Hay; “nuclear reactor.” Pause. Say that again. Nuclear reactor. As the title says, Hitachi Makes That – well, technically, they make support components but still. They also make TVs, sensors in your car, the transformer delivering power to your house, the optical sensor in your camera, the RAM in your PC, and the list goes on.
So yes, Hitachi makes parts for nuclear reactors and has been making parts for them since they were invented. Remember, they’re a conglomerate – a collection of very large businesses with incredible diversity. If you can name it, Hitachi probably does make it. And as a result, Hitachi spends over 5% of it’s annual revenue on their research and development departments. Giving that better context – Hitachi’s revenue for FY ending March 31, 2010 was ¥8,968,546,000,000 and ¥546,326,000,000 of that was spent on research and development or nearly 6%. At current conversion rates, that works out to $5,983,855,156.94USD – nearly six billion dollars in research and development. Other companies may spend more as a percentage of their revenue (EMC, over $6B combined in acquisitions and research for 2008), and generally are more focused (IBM, $5.8B USD for 2009), but that’s still six billion dollars that Hitachi has spent on developing and improving all of their products. Continue reading ‘HDS Geek Day 0.9 – Yes, Hitachi Makes That. No, Seriously.’
