Matsushita Electric Industrial, the world's largest consumer electronics company, said its net profit soared more than 12-fold to 32.8 billion yenmillion dollars) from 2.7 billion yen a year earlier.

Its pretax profit shot up 219.3 percent to 80.5 billion yen with sales rising 19.2 percent to reach 2.1 trillion yen.

While sales in mobile phones and audio equipment fell in the June quarter, flat screen TVs and DVD recorders rose sharply thanks to strong demand ahead of the Athens Olympics in August, said Matsushita, which is best known for its National and Panasonic brand names.

"Our business strategy aimed at the Olympics worked well. By segment, domestic sales of PDP (plasma display panel) TVs are soaring," said Takahiro Mori, Matsushita's director of corporate communications.

Sales of PDP TVs jumped 120 percent to 45.3 billion yen while DVD players and recorders rose seven percent to 36.9 billion yen. Semiconductor sales grew 17 percent to 132 billion yen.

"DVDs and flat TVs are the backbone of our strong growth," Mori said.

Matsushita's best-selling 42-inch PDP TV costs around 500,000 yen to 600,000 yen while that of its popular DVD recorder is priced at 80,000 yen on average.

Leading technology firm Hitachi Ltd. said it returned to profit in the quarter thanks to Olympics-induced global demand, which boosted sales of flat TVs, DVD players and recorders.

"We believe the Olympics factor really pushed our sales of digital media products such as flat TVs and DVD players. Demand for those products was high both in Japan and abroad," Hitachi spokesman Tadashi Hisanaga said.

In the June quarter, Hitachi sold 64,000 flat TVs worldwide, up 183 percent from the same period last year, while optical products including DVD players and recorders jumped 121 percent to 16.3 million units.

Hitachi posted group net profit of 16 billion yen in the quarter, reversing a year-ago loss of 38.4 billion yen. It had a pretax profit of 45.8 billion yen reversing a year-ago loss of 30.9 billion yen, while sales rose 8.8 percent to 2.06 trillion yen.

Leading computer maker Fujitsu said its net loss shrank by two thirds to 11.8 billion yen (106 million dollars) in the quarter on higher sales of semiconductors and plasma display panels as well as cost reductions.

"Sales of PDPs and LCDs were also brisk ahead of the Athens Olympic Games," senior managing director Masamichi Ogura said.

Fujitsu's recurring loss also narrowed to 15.8 billion yen from 55.1 billion previously while sales grew 7.4 percent to 1.01 trillion yen.

Meanwhile, Kyocera Corp., a major Japanese maker of computer chip ceramic packages, said its net profit more than doubled to 21.98 billion yen on brisk sales of semiconductor products for mobile phones and cost cutting efforts.

Its pretax profit jumped 131.5 percent to 38.1 billion yen as sales rose 15.8 percent to 293.1 billion yen.

On Wednesday, high-tech manufacturers including Canon, NEC, Mitsubishi Electric, Sharp and Advantest announced strong quarterly earnings as they continued to cash in on the digital appliances boom.

SPACE.WIRE