Olympus has officially announced that it will be leaving portable MP3 players behind and switching focus to single lens reflex (SLR) cameras in the future.

Although Olympus is the world's fourth most popular digital camera brand after Canon, Sony and Kodak, it is still regarded as a small fish. The company said its group net profit tumbled to 2.17 billion yen ($18.50 million) in the April-September first half, from 6.71 billion yen a year earlier. The drop was due to a large loss in its imaging division, which handles cameras.

Also, the Tokyo-based company has announced that it is stopping production of portable digital music players, as it is unable to keep up with the stronger players such as Sony and Apple.

Olympus is the second major victim of the rapidly growing market and the dominance of Apple's iPod. Earlier this year we witnessed the retreat of D&M Holdings from the portable music player market due to their Rio brand of music players loosing more and more ground.

Olympus has stated that it will be focusing its attention away from compact models where, due to over 30 manufacturers and a saturated market, demand is small, and looking towards single lens reflex cameras in the future. The company's aims to have compact cameras account for 40 percent of sales in its imaging division five years from now, down from 72 percent last year, while boosting SLR models so they account for 30 percent of the division's sales in five years time, up from 3 percent last year.


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