Wireless Hit by Economic Worries

After a few quarters of nonchalant statements that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and rising oil prices weren’t going to affect the tech stocks , the bloom is off the rose. The lowered sales forecasts and lackluster quarters are trickling in, and the trend for wireless companies is clear. This morning, networking equipment maker Ciena said in its earnings release that it expected lowered sales for the coming quarter. Gary Smith, Ciena president and CEO said: “In addition to existing customer-specific challenges, we have recently begun to experience order delays from many of our Tier One service provider customers, which we attribute to their guarded approach to capital expenditures given the uncertain macroeconomic environment. While we’ve seen no project or order cancellations, sales cycles are lengthening and some deployments are slowing.” Yesterday Qualcomm sent lower the shares of fellow chip maker Texas Instruments, as well as those of handset maker N...