Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Andrew Neff with Bear Stearns.
Andrew Neff - Bear Stearns
Thanks very much Mark. I just want to go back to the issue of the weakness in the Americas. Do you think those, when you come down to it, was that IBM-related? Do you think that was market-related? What is going on there?
And then the converse thing for Asia, do you think it is the same thing? Is it IBM or is it the market?
Mark Loughridge
Well, you know, if you look at it, I am not going to make an economic forecast here. If you look at the U.S., however, we did see weakness, predominantly at the end of the quarter, in our enterprise space.
Really, SMB did fine, especially consistent with prior rates. I do expect that we’ll see improvement in the U.S. as we go into the second quarter. Now, if you look at the other geographies, I mean, we had a spectacular quarter in Asia-Pacific.
As we said, three of the regions were in strong double-digit growth. We had another good quarter in Japan. So Asia-Pacific did really a terrific job, and I think that is a combination of, obviously, the local economy, but also our execution within that economy.
Now, you take Europe, I think Europe showed a lot of performance in this quarter, and if you look at Germany, remembering that Germany is our third-largest country, Germany up 10% is a huge rebound for that country.
So I am quite encouraged by our world trade performance. I mean, if you kind of characterize this quarter, it’s really a geographical performance quarter where the world trade units did a terrific job. We do have some work to do in the U.S., but I am confident we’ll see some improvement as we go into the second quarter.
Patricia Murphy
Thanks Andrew, let’s go to the next question please.
Operator
Our next question is from Toni Sacconaghi with Sanford Bernstein.
Toni Sacconaghi - Sanford Bernstein
Yes, thank you. I would just like to follow up on that question, please. Put another way, do you actually think the weakness in the U.S. was pushed out to next quarter, or do you believe that we are at a fundamentally lower demand level than perhaps you anticipated at the beginning of the year?
And to substantiate that, maybe you could comment on what your backlog or pipeline looks like in software and services. You had mentioned in both, particularly in software and the organic business that some large deals may have been pushed out to next quarter. And on services, you had mentioned some signings that also occurred early this quarter. So, basic question is, is this push-out or weaker demand, and can you comment on your pipeline for software and services?
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
