Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Our first question will come from Phil Winslow with Credit Suisse.
Phil Winslow - Credit Suisse
Hi guys. Good quarter. Joel, just wondering if you could give some commentary about what you saw from just an international perspective and contrast that with the U.S., just from a buyer’s standpoint, then how you sort of were thinking about things as you start to transition into 2009. And, then also when you think about your Q1 guidance, obviously PC unit sales were weak in Q4, how does that factor into how you think about Q1?
Joel Ronning
All right. Alright, going to the buyers on an international basis, we are finding, we just continue to find very large opportunities with, particularly in the CE markets Phil, where we're going to talk with clients and they just don't have the capacity to manage the level of complexity that is going on there if you are trying to do an international E-Commerce business, and virtually every one of these CE companies are all multi-billion dollar organizations, they are all international, they have an international footprint.
So we are having to work with product managers and marketing managers all across the world, so my sense is that this economic environment is really making this a little bit easier for us because we are seeing a pull-back on many of the prospects that we have been talking to and we have seen a number of clients coming to us shutting down their internal systems, and I believe that one of the major factors there is that once you go global E-Commerce, it becomes increasingly complex and there is a lot of risk to mitigate. So, this is playing to our sweet spot, we done this in the past, we saw it in 2000 and we are seeing almost exactly the same behavior, you know, in these current conditions.
I got to tell you, I know that PC sales are down. When we have looked at the data we see them down when you include business-to-business, but when you look at the consumer side it looks flat to maybe slightly up, and that's the primary business that we are working inside of from an LAM standpoint.
And so we are, I have to say, I am feeling OK about what we've seen in terms of indications with the consumer business. You know, we saw that drop off on September 15 of this past year, and we are seeing, I guess, a slightly unexpected level of firmness in the buying patterns from the consumers out there. So I am cautiously optimistic for 2009.
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