Sun Microsystems, a favourite of industry analysts during the dot com boom, has been badly bruised by the global recession in the technology industry that has seen its corporate customers cut back dramatically on spending on the sort of expensive high-end computers that the company manufactures.

The sub-Saharan operation has grown revenues to two and a half times more than they were just three years ago, even as Sun Microsystems reported a loss for 2002 on revenues that slid by nearly a third. Strong growth in South Africa is made even more remarkable by the fact that Sun had no presence in the country at all before opening its subsidiary in 1994.