Hitachi severs half remaining Dramurai jobs

The cuts follow an earlier culling of 1,300 employees' jobs at March end, and offer grim news on the state of the current semiconductor industry.

Typically, the large Japanese congloms have realised that they have to invest bigtime in future technology for when the recovery comes, and as many of them seem hell-bent on neither investing nor keeping their staff on, owing to bank debts and the dire climate, that is bad news for 2003 and beyond.

While many of the congloms have relationships with Taiwanese firms and have farmed out work and hi-tech patents in joint ventures there, they still fail to see a return on investment despite their years of work.

For example, it is pretty doubtful whether any firm has ever made a return of investment on liquid crystal diode (LCD) and thin film transistor (TFT) research and development, but nevertheless, without those investments, where would we be now?

We'd be stuck with 100 year old technology called cathode ray tube (CRT) screens, that's where.

Chicago Tribune. INQBLOT Queen Victoria died 100 years ago.