Olympus slashed its imaging division operating loss by more than 50% in the nine months to 31 December 2011, newly released accounts show.
Olympus reported a 14.7% rise in digital camera sales over the nine months, reaching 94,557 million yen (£771m) at 31 December 2011.
Operating losses fell to 3,802 million yen (£31m), from 7,732 million yen for the same period the previous year.
?Revenue increased as a result of favourable sales of new products in the Olympus Pen series of interchangeable lens system digital cameras?. The E-P3, E-PL3 and E-PM1,? said the firm in a statement.
Growth in sales of high-end compact cameras, such as the Olympus XZ-1, in Europe and Asia, also boosted revenue.
Olympus?s total Imaging System Business sales increased by 16.5%.
The figures are contained in the company?s business results, an English version of which has now appeared on the Olympus website.
Looking to the future, Olympus pointed to the release of its OM-D E-M5 in late March, adding: ?Several new compact models are scheduled for successive launches from spring, using [the] same image processing technologies as micro SLRs [sic] for high sensitivity, low noise and fast autofocus.?
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