SAP sales fall by a third

SAP, the world's largest maker of software which no one can explain what it does, says that sales of new software fell by a third in the first quarter of the year.

The German outfit said that its sales dropped 33 per cent to €418m, while software and maintenance revenues were flat at €1.74bn.

According to the FT, SAP regularly reported double-digit growth in both categories.

Last year it thought that the economic crisis could raise information-technology spending as its clients looked to cut costs with new software. Looks like it was wrong there, but in a very precise way. µ