What's more, reports of a corporate tech slowdown could be greatly exaggerated. According to Bensinger, telecoms usually end up spending more than they project on equipment over the course of a year. That also appears to be true for business areas such as storage networks and Internet software applications, according to the Goldman survey. Even reports of the demise of the lowly PC might end up being rather short-lived. In Europe and Asia, PC penetration is only just beginning.
Analysts expect continued strong growth in Asia and an uptick in Europe as well.
Europe has really lagged the U.S. in investing in this area. The savior this time could come in the form of Microsoft's Whistler operating system combined with demands for more multimedia applications delivered over fat data pipes. Surely, the nastiness on Nasdaq will have a short-term fallout for IT spending. This doesn't happen in a vacuum. That could be already happening.