Technology stocks suffered another sharp fall in the US on Thursday as Lucent, the world's largest telecoms equipment maker, issued a new revenue warning.

Lucent Technologies said it expects its third-quarter revenues to drop by 10% to 15% from the previous quarter, - despite analysts predictions they would match the previous three-month period.

The news pushed Lucent shares down 15 cents to $2.80, and helped force the technology-laden Nasdaq index down 22.23 points to an eight-month low of 1,496.89.

No profit

Lucent recently revealed a loss of $535m (�369m) for the first three months of the year.

While this was better than the $3.7bn lost in the same period of 2001, the firm has not reported a profit for two years.

The company has insisted that 2003 will bring a return to profitability, but admitted that the next few months remain uncertain.

The firm announced in April that it was laying off 6,000 workers, having already spun off a huge chunk of itself into a separate company, Avaya, and laid off a third of its workforce.

In the wider US markets, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 114.91 points, or 1.19%, to 9,502.80, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 10.7 points, or 1.05%, to 1,009.56.