It Spending Shows its Age

摘要

It's been a tough century so far for the business of computer hardware, software and services. The industry that wrote the book on growth from the '60s onward has been acting, in the new millennium, like just another sluggish component of a bogged-down world economy. It had its boom. It had its bust. But so far, it has not had the widely hoped-for bounce. As 2003 reached the halfway mark, observers of information technology (IT) could see signs of possible recovery. Sales and profits at the big IT companies were picking up (with help from a weak dollar), and the technology sector was making a good showing in the stock market. But analysts following IT remained cautious and, if anything, were getting more so.