"For the first time we see soft indicators of a coming downturn in ICT spending in EMEA," said Martin Hingley, chief research officer, IDC EMEA. "In 1Q08 there was no growth in revenues for the leading 39 regional vendors and the software category declined for the first time; hardware revenue growth slowed and hardware margins slipped in the quarter. Consequently, we have lowered our growth expectation for these vendors from 5.0% to 3.7% for the full year."