Kyocera posted a 1% drop in quarterly profit, hit by price declines for mobile phone parts in China and weak printer sales in the US, a Reuters report said.
It also expects price falls of 15% in its mainstay capacitor business this year, but it stuck by its annual forecast of a small profit fall on strength in its solar cell and semiconductor parts operations, the Reuters report added.
'Some of our main businesses are weakening, but orders are strong in other areas, such as solar,' Kyocera executive officer Masakazu Mitsuda said, quoted by the Reuters report.
Price falls and weak sales of capacitors, used to store and control the flow of electricity, prompted the world's No.1 ceramic capacitor maker, Murata Manufacturing, to revise down its annual outlook, the report added.
Kyocera, the world's top maker of ceramic casings for chips, expects annual operating profit of 145 billion yen (€865 million, US$1.3 billion), a decline of 4.9% from the previous year, but higher than a Reuters Estimates average of 138.5 billion yen (€826 million, US$1.2 billion) from 14 analysts.
In April-June, operating profit came to 28 billion yen, while net profit was 22 billion yen (€132 million, US$204 million), also down 12%, on sales of 331.8 billion yen, which were up 5%.
Kyocera, which competes against Sharp, Sanyo and Germany's Q-Cells in the solar business, said quarterly solar orders grew roughly 50% year-on-year driven by demand in Europe.