IT recovery may take time, says Ballmer

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on Monday that corporate spending on information technology will not recover to levels seen in recent years before the global economic slowdown.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said on Monday that corporate spending on information technology will not recover to levels seen in recent years before the global economic slowdown.

“The economy went through a set of changes on a global basis over last year which are, I think is fair to say, once in a lifetime,” Ballmer told a meeting of South Korean executives.

Spending on information technology, which accounted for about half of capital expenditures in developed countries before the crisis, was unlikely to rebound fully, he said.

Company purchases of PCs and servers were down about 15 per cent globally. “It reflects the fact that CEOs have much more tightly constrained IT budgets,” he said.