Hitachi, the Japanese electronics company, announced plans yesterday to increase sales from internet-related business four-fold to 900bn yen a year (£5.3bn) by 2003.

Hitachi's president, Etsuhiko Shoyama, said in Tokyo that a new company would be launched next week to oversee net-related business in such fields as customer management and encryption technology.

Hitachi will also offer on line services to the financial, manufacturing and distribution industries, as well as to schools and colleges, and the government.

The subsidiary, Hitachi netBusiness, will be capitalised at about 400m yen, and will receive investment worth 30bn yen over the next four years.

Hitachi is a relative latecomer to the already crowded online commerce industry. Two of its biggest rivals - Fujitsu and NEC- both own established service providers, along with Sony, are among Japan's core internet stocks. In February, Toshiba said it, too, intended to expand its information technology business.

Shoyama was unperturbed by yesterday's ructions on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which saw huge drops in the value of IT stocks listed on the Nikkei index.

"I don't think the stock price movements reflect uncertainty over the IT and Internet business," Shoyama said. "IT will continue to progress in Japan."