Tokyo - Hitachi Ltd on Tuesday said its net loss expanded in the third quarter and it also reiterated it would incur its worst annual loss for fiscal 2008 that ends in March.

The weak performance was attributed to sales declines in semiconductors, automotive devices, industrial machinery among other products as well as the yen's surge against other currencies.

It has been revealed by the Japanese electronics conglomerate, Hitachi that it will produce Solid State Drives (SSD) jointly with chipmaker Intel. SSDs are memory devices that are figured as a nice alternative for HDDs (Hard Disk Drives). Hitachi, the world's third largest hard drive maker has never used the SSD technology before. Since the SSDs are capable of absorbing shocks better and consume less power than hard disk drives, they are mainly used in laptop PCs. The features of SSDs are quite vital for any laptop user.

World’s largest maker of plasma televisions, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Canon Inc. and Hitachi Ltd have agreed to team up to promote liquid crystal display (LCD) panel business.