Sometimes doing badly is not really the end of the world. Take Hitachi for example. Although it posted a quarterly loss on slow television sales it said it would rebound to a profit this year with its drives hard drives business, which pushed its shares up 6 per cent.

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As the biggest Japanese industrial electronics company, Hitachi, said its losses would continue this year in its plasma TVs, however it said next year it would post a profit of US$386 million.

Hitachi is one of the largest makers of plasma TVs, but is facing strong competition from the likes of Matsushita Electric Industrial and LG Electronics.

The company said it expected to ship 900,000 plasma TVs in the next 12 months, up from some 850,000 units last year, as it withdraws from some distribution channels in the US and Europe, where the brand name has limited appeal and would instead concentrate on expanding in China and Japan.

In its hard drives division, where it is third in the world after Seagate and Western Digital, Hitachi is looking to grab market share while cutting its production and distribution costs.