"Economic doldrums in the Asian region has cast a dark shadow over our sales of electronic components, while pressuring our operating profits by heightened price competition," TDK said in a statement.

TDK's earnings result came after the Tokyo stock market closed. TDK ended down 20 yen, or 0.2 percent, at 10,200.

The earnings announcement followed a recent series of weaker than anticipated business results for the first quarter of the fiscal year begun April 1 from leading manufacturers such as Sony Corp and Pioneer Electronic Corp.

Their poor business performance fanned investors' fears over the nation's mighty manufacturing sector, which analysts say is bracing for painful earnings revisions for this business year amid a long-running sales slump at home and in Asia.

TDK said consolidated sales, meanwhile, grew 6.0 per cent to 173.45 billion yen in the first quarter, as healthy sales in the European and the US markets offset the decline in domestic sales. The year-on-year weakness of the yen against major currencies also helped increase TDK's consolidated sales and profits in the quarter, TDK said.

The company enjoyed a 3.6 per cent year-on-year rise in its group net profit to 13.77 billion yen in the first quarter.

TDK's recording device division, which makes magneto-resistive heads for computer hard disk drives, scored a strong rally of 29 per cent year-on-year in group sales in the first quarter after the company stepped up production overseas to meet increased offshore demand.

But its group sales dropped by 14.7 per cent in products related to integrated circuits, hit by a sales slump of modem cards and semiconductors across the globe, it said.