The few IT vendors with good news also ran into headwinds. EMC said Tuesday that quarterly revenue, including its VMware virtualization software business, reached a record $4.02 billion. But hit by restructuring costs, the company reported net income was $288 million, a steep decline from $526 million a year earlier.

Restructuring charges led Yahoo Tuesday to report a net loss of $303 million, compared to net income of $206 million a year earlier, though excluding one-time items, the company had net income of $238 million, or $0.17 per share, $0.04 per share above the expectation of analysts polled by Thompson Reuters.

Elsewhere in the Internet arena, Time Warner's beleaguered AOL Internet unit said Thursday it will lay off 700 employees.

Amazon, also on Thursday, managed to offer a bit of good news for e-commerce when it reported fourth-quarter net income of $225 million, up from $207 million, on sales of $6.7 billion, up 18 percent.

The telecom sector also showed some strength this week. Verizon, banking on wireless as well as FiOS TV and high-speed Internet services, said Tuesday it posted net income of US$1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, up slightly from $1.1 billion in 2007.