Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Richard Williams - Cross Research.
Richard Williams - Cross Research
I wonder if you could give some color on the geographies and the tone of business, if you don't mind.
Hamish N. J. Brewer
The Americas continues to perform strongly and I would say that when we look back to the first half of this year we saw a softer sales performance from the Americas in the first quarter and then we saw a strong sales performance in the second quarter. And at this stage, when I think of the third and fourth quarter I think of a similar pattern. I anticipate the Americas driving their software sales performance that we're expecting to get in the fourth quarter.
Europe seems to be, I would say, steadily improving, and our prospects and pipeline there are beginning to look better and Asia Pacific, I still feel as though we are in re-build mode there. You may remember that we pretty much replaced most of the sales in Asia Pacific and we started this year with pretty much a brand new team, and while that team is getting underway, and we're seeing some early signs of progress.
For example, we announced last quarter that we were building an initiative to grow our business in China, and we were able to announce one significant win in the third quarter, in China, although no license revenue was recognized from that deal in the third quarter. Apart from a few signs like that, in general I would say we still have a lot of work to do in Asia Pacific. So I think it's going to be a strong performance for the Americas, increasingly strong performance from Europe over the next few quarters, and then I am hopeful Asia Pacific will start to catch up during the course of 2010.
Richard Williams - Cross Research
Do you think the economy is stable, improving, deteriorating at this point from a macro sense?
Hamish N. J. Brewer
When I look at—and the best measure we have of the economy is people's willingness to write a check for a big-ticket item, like a piece of software. And when I look at the execution of deals and the sort of volatility and the transactions that we're trying to execute, I feel that the third quarter came in pretty similar, really, to the second quarter in many ways.
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