Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, warned at the weekend that "rough" business conditions in Europe were likely to weigh on the technology industry for the foreseeable future. His comments follow signs from other big US technology companies in recent days that Europe has become one of the weakest markets for IT products and services, adding to the industry's broader problems. Oracle, the maker of database and other corporate software, last week singled out falling demand in Europe as one of the main reasons for its latest lacklustre quarterly earnings, echoing comments made earlier by Hewlett-Packard, the second-biggest maker of computer hardware.
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