In light of the current economic downturn, Japan's leading PC maker NEC Corp., has cut back its complete year profit outlook by as much as 40%.

The company says that, in addition to a weak economy, huge losses on the firm's microchip unit and slow network system sales have contributed to the decision of the cut down.

NEC's biggest customer had always been Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., Japan's largest phone company, but lately there had been a sudden drop in the previously received heavy orders from the telecom firm. Also, Nintendo's move of suddenly cutting down of orders for chips used in the Wii, has hit NEC hard.

"January-March could be very severe", President Kaoru Yano said. "At this point, it's hard to read which way things will go".

NEC has now shared that it estimates its operating profit to be nearly 60 Billion Yen ($661 Million) for the current fiscal year, much lower than the earlier shared estimate of 100 Billion Yen. The figures posted by the company are much below the expectations of 15 top analysts polled by Thomson Reuters which stood at around 70.4 Billion Yen.