Japan news: Worries about weak digital demand from Olympics

May 5, 2008 - The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing this summer have long been touted as a potential windfall for consumer electronics, but a pair of reports out of Japan suggest the numbers won't add up as high as previously hoped.But wariness among firms, particularly Japanese, has now entered the picture because of worries about the US economic slowdown and "tepid" domestic consumption, the paper notes. Orders and shipments typically spike at the start of an Olympic year in anticipation of soaring sales of TVs and related products just before the Games, but such supply activity hasn't happened this year.The Dai-ichi Life Research Institute has lowered its expectations of consumption of Japanese products this summer by about 25%, to ¥345.4B (US $3.27B), down from a forecast of ¥459.3B ($4.36B) back in December, notes the Nikkei daily. Consumption is lower than in previous Olympic years (e.g., the 2004 Athens Olympics saw a spending rise of ¥440B/$4.18B), partly because of rising prices and economic pressures on consumers.