Hitachi Targets Spanish Market for Expansion of Hard Drive Business
Wed 11 July, 2007

Company Plans Doubling of its Business in Spain with Terabyte Desktop and Fastest Notebook Hard Drives

MADRID, Spain – July 11, 2007 – Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is today announcing an increased focus on the Spanish market as the country represents one of the top growth engines for Hitachi hard disk drives in Europe. Hitachi intends to double its business in Spain in 2007 by increasing marketing investment and focus.

Through long-standing relationships with distributors, Ingram and Avnet, Hitachi will increase its presence in Spain with a leadership product portfolio, including the world’s first terabyte (TB) 3.5-inch hard drive and the world’s fastest 2.5-inch notebook hard drive at 200 gigabytes (GB). The Deskstar™ 7K1000 and Travelstar™ 7K200 were both delivered first to market in 1Q07 and 2Q07, respectively, to the delight and praise of customers and reviewers across the globe. Both products are now shipping in volume. In addition, Hitachi will also serve Spain with its family of Ultrastar™ hard drives for mission-critical enterprise applications.

Desktop (3.5-inch) and mobile (2.5-inch) hard drives represent the bulk of Spain’s hard drive consumption, mostly through local systems integrator developing white box desktop and notebook systems. While desktop is the largest segment in the Spanish hard drive market, the mobile segment is expected to show faster growth in 2007. Both these segments provide strong opportunities for Hitachi as the company has brought to market milestone capacity and performance achievements this year that will give Spanish system integrators a strong differentiator.

"Hitachi is significantly increasing investments in Spain to achieve our growth objectives for 2007; we’ll do this by working closely with our distribution partners and responding to the requirements of Spain’s leading systems integrators," said Nick Kyriacou, director, EMEA, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "We are confident that we can achieve our goal to grow our business by 100 percent via marketing investment, product leadership and strong partnerships."

"Hitachi is a leading provider of hard drive technology and can address every segment of the Spanish market. We have the specific drive for the specific need and application of our customers -- from local IT system integrators to CE retail assemblers," said Jacqueline Legentil, Spain channel manager, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "With the strength of our local distributors we can also address the thousands of resellers and specialized shops all over the Spanish territory."

Breakthrough Leadership & Product Breadth
Hitachi will combine breakthrough capacity and performance with a broad product portfolio to grow its participation in the Spanish hard drive market with the Deskstar, Travelstar, Ultrastar, CinemaStar and Endurastar product lines. As the worldwide segment leader in 2.5-inch and the capacity and performance leader in 3.5-inch, Hitachi is bringing cutting-edge technology to Spain.

The Deskstar/CinemaStar Family
Hitachi Deskstar hard disk drives enable fast transfer rates, low power utilization and quiet acoustics. These features combine to make the Deskstar ideal not only for standard PC systems but also for ATA entry-servers, personal video recorders and other non-PC computing requirements.

• Deskstar 7K1000 – World’s first terabyte hard drive, designed for gaming and high-performance PCs, external storage devices and upgrade applications, 7200 RPM, up to 1 TB.
• Deskstar 7K160 – Offering "sweet spot" storage capacities at 80 and 160 GB, the 7K160 is an ideal solution for commercial PC applications.
• Deskstar T7K500 – With storage capacities ranging from 250 to 500 GB and both SATA and PATA interfaces, the T7K500 addresses the performance and capacity requirements of consumer and gaming PCs.
• Deskstar E7K500 – Hitachi’s enterprise-rated SATA hard disk drive ideal for nearline storage, disk-to-disk backup and RAID configurations, 7200 RPM, up to 500 GB.
• CinemaStar 7K1000 hard drives – Delivering high capacity and specifically optimized for streaming consumer electronics applications and ideally suited for digital video recording.

Travelstar Notebook/Mobile Family

• Travelstar 7K200 – Industry’s highest-performing 7200 RPM notebook drive, up to 200 GB, Bulk Data Encryption option for added data security at the hard drive level
• Travelstar 5K250 – Quarter-terabyte of storage on a 5400 RPM 2.5-inch hard drive with leadership performance, shock, power consumption and acoustics; includes Bulk Data Encryption option;
• Endurastar J4K50 & NK450 hard drives – Designed specifically to perform in extreme temperature environments and ideal for automotive entertainment and navigation applications, 4200 RPM, up to 50 GB.

Ultrastar Enterprise Family
Hitachi Ultrastar hard disk drives are designed for ultra-high performance, mission-critical enterprise computing environments like online transaction processing, data analysis and other multi-user applications.

• Ultrastar 15K300 – Built for mission-critical enterprise computing environments, 3.5-inch, 15,000 RPM, up to 300GB;
• Ultrastar C10K147 – Optimized for the power, performance requirements of servers, Hitachi’s first small form factor 2.5-inch product, up to 147 GB,10,000 RPM;
• Ultrastar A7K1000 – Ideal for high capacity, low cost-per-gigabyte for lower duty cycle enterprise environments, 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM, up to 1 TB of storage.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies trademarks are authorized for use in countries and jurisdictions in which Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has the right to use, market and advertise the brands. The Travelstar trademark is authorized for use in the Americas, EMEA and the following Asia-Pacific countries and jurisdictions: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Please contact Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for further information. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is a storage technology leader, founded in 2003 through the combination of Hitachi ’s and IBM’s hard disk drive businesses. Hitachi GST enables users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing high-value hard disk storage in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home.

With its legacy in hard drive invention, Hitachi GST led the industry in celebrating the storage technology’s golden anniversary in 2006. The hard drive has had a profound effect on the computing and consumer electronics industries after five decades of innovation. That heritage lives on at Hitachi GST today through products that define the standard for hard drive miniaturization, capacity, performance and reliability.

With approximately 33,000 employees worldwide, Hitachi GST offers a comprehensive range of hard drive products for desktop computers, high-performance servers, notebooks and consumer devices. For more information, please visit the company’s Web site at http://www.hitachigst.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 384,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2006 (ended March 31, 2007) consolidated revenues totaled 10,247 billion yen ($86.8 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.