Nikon has also cut its lens sales forecast – by 200,000.

Revising its predicted sales for the year ended 31 March 2013, Nikon said in a statement: ‘A decrease in unit sales is expected, along with a drop in selling prices resulting from increasing competition due to drastically worsening market conditions that started from the latter part of the third quarter, and the impact is expected to persist into the fourth quarter.’

Volume sales of Nikon system cameras more than doubled in the last three months of 2012, jumping from 940,000 to 2.1 million units.

Meanwhile, unit sales of compact cameras also beat those for the same quarter a year earlier, despite a shrinkage in the overall market.

However, Nikon has cut its Imaging Company net sales revenue forecast by five billion yen.

And the Nikon group has revised its total net income downwards by 36.7%, to 38 billion yen.