• With corporate spending down, it was all but inevitable that Cisco Systems, the leading supplier of network equipment, would experience a sharp drop in sales. The company’s latest results were accompanied by a grim forecast, and points to deepening problems for the technology industry at large. Still, Cisco is sitting on a mountain of cash, and in coming months plans to introduce low cost servers that will compete with products from traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

• Like so many other Japanese electronics firms, Panasonic has fallen victim to stingy consumer spending and a strong yen. The company, one of the largest and most diverse in its field, said it would lose $4.2bn in the year to March 2009, and that it was cutting 15,000 jobs.

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