The IT (information and communication technologies) industry is a real economy sector that suffers greatly from financial crisis. And there is an economic law that explains this rather easily.

Statement #1.
In the economic textbook the law of diminishing returns is explained as: as more additional units of variable resource are being inputted in the production the less additional benefit is received.

Statement #2.
Informational technologies and software development services are not final products consumed by people (excluding computer games and some other similar programs that are) but they are used to produce other goods and services. So, IT services is an example of intermediate product and play the role of resources in the process of production.

Conclusion #1.
IT services (or software development services) have to create additional values if they want to be sold. And this created additional value has to be greater than the money spent for IT.

Conclusion #2.
As company implements more and more IT technologies in the process of production additional value starts to diminish (according to the law of diminishing returns - see Statement #1). Today there are very few (if any) firms that have never implemented IT technologies. So, there almost no companies that can see a tremendous result from buying additional set of IT.

Main conclusion.
In order to sell IT services in this situation software development companies need either to decrease their prices accordingly to decreased additional value added or invent something really extraordinary and revolutionary. 2009 will prove this!