Ocs sales across all its business areas have fallen, and the recent New York attacks have ruled out reliable estimates of results for the full year, it says.

The firm notched up a 3% revenue rise in the nine months to 31 August, but the increase that took it to 1.5bn was due to exchange rate gains.

"The sharp decline in economic growth is causing customers to postpone their investment decisions," said UK managing director Mike Cornish.

Operating income fell 15% to 102m and net income by 27% to 47m. The US terrorist attacks had clouded the future financial outlook, he added.

"The events in the US have made it impossible to reliably estimate results for the full financial year."

Buyer hesitancy had also affected one of its two recent launches in the document printing arena, he said. The DPS400 is struggling despite good progress with Ocs CPS700 seven-colour A3 digital printer, which costs 60,000.

However, Cornish said the DPS400 was a "robust product" and a "real alternative to one particular competitor, Xerox, which has dominated this market for a long time".

"When buying slows down and you have expensive gear customers delay. But it is nothing more than the initial stage of a market trying to recover."

The CPS700 was described as "our long-awaited full-colour baby" by the firm on its launch earlier this year (PrintWeek, 16 February) and the first UK order was due shortly, said Cornish.

Story by Jez Abbott