Olympus Corp. said recurring profit dropped 56.1 percent to 11.4 billion yen for the six months to September while sales rose Olympus sales rose 3.0 percent to 308.7 billion yen on increased volumes.

"We faced a some 18 percent decline in prices of Olympus brand digital cameras in the first half -- greater than the average price fall of 15 percent in the digital camera industry," Olympus director Hideo Yamada told a news conference.

It said sales in Europe rose 14 percent to 107.7 billion yen, with Asia up 40.8 percent at 33.2 billion yen but Japan fell 12.4 percent to 82.1 billion yen and the United States dropped 2.6 percent to 85.7 billion yen.

In October, Olympus revised down its forecast for the year to March 2005 due to lower-than-expected earnings from its digital camera business.

The company now forecasts net profit of 13.5 billion yen, recurring profit of 23 billion yen and sales of 840 billion yen for the year, down sharply from its earlier estimate of 32.5 billion yen, 57 billion yen and 885 billion yen, respectively.

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