"Like other software companies, we have experienced unanticipated delays with a number of enterprise orders for a variety of reasons, including the shifting of customer budgets and spending to year 2000 and other issues," says Becker.
Wal-Mart's press releases suggest that the restoration of the layaway program, which was discontinued in 2006, is meant to help its customers "budget" so that Christmas can be "worry-free".
Customers' budgets are still limited, and HBO Go will increase competition for viewers and for content.
He said it was impressive that Verizon continued to squeeze more money from each customer, because its newest subscribers were "low-quality" customers — budget-conscious people who held out for many years on buying smartphones.
But he is undaunted even though customers' budgets are tighter and they want more value — and even though business was down 8percentt from January through June, compared with the same six months in 2007.
When I was a bank manager I used to go through customers' budgets and tell them that if they could afford it, they should spend some money on themselves, even if it was just a book or CD a month.
The cautious tone seemed positively upbeat compared with the fears three months ago when EMC reported cuts in customers' budgets and an unexpected decline in October sales along with its figures for the third quarter.
Big IT providers report that customers' budgets are so squeezed that there's a huge reluctance to invest.
The expiration on Nov. 1 of a temporary increase in government food stamp benefits shrank many Wal-Mart customers' budgets, according to the chain.
At a time when people should be settling in, relaxing, or thinking about intimacy with their significant other, they're thinking about their boss, colleagues, deadlines, reports, customers, budgets, emails, and what they need to do the next day-all of which are entirely incompatible with sex.
