The tragedy on Tuesday could not come at a worse time for technology companies. Short-term business disruptions could prove disastrous because of their strong reliance on end of quarter sales.

The tech sector is already suffering from a large drop in expected spending on information technology worldwide.

Many large corporations place their orders for a wide variety of computer hardware and software in the last two weeks of the quarter in order to secure large discounts.

With key sales executives still stranded in different locations, and the distraction of recent events potentially affecting chief executives at large companies, there is a real danger that IT purchases will be delayed.

This could lead to a flood of earnings warnings over the next few weeks as technology companies restate their guidance on their current quarter's financial targets.

"There is no doubt that IT spending will be affected and some of that will be delayed into the next quarter," Michael Erbschloe, senior analyst at Computer Economics said.

The company provides IT spending advice to many large companies.

"Towards the end of the quarter, chief executives and chief information officers set up meetings to discuss their IT spending plans, many of those meetings have been postponed," Mr Erbschloe added.

Other analysts echoed his comments. Jim Balderston, senior analyst at Sageza, an IT consultancy, said, "Even if everything was back to normal there is clearly a psychological impact that is distracting decision makers and will continue distract them for sometime."

Morgan Stanley on Thursday warned there was "an incremental risk" for enterprise software companies because "they tend to close most of the deals in the last 10 days" of the quarter. This includes companies such as PeopleSoft, SAP, Microsoft and many others

This is also true for computer hardware makers such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and EMC. A large number of their deals are closed in the last weeks of the quarter.

Oracle is likely to escape short-term disruptions because its most recent quarter ended on August 31.

September is a very important month for Intel, the world's largest chipmaker. It typically books about 50 per cent of its revenues this month as PC makers worldwide gear up for the busy fourth quarter.

At last week's mid-quarter update, Andy Bryant, chief financial officer at Intel, noted that September is a crucial month " there is always anxiety over September," he said.

Because Intel's microprocessors are expensive, customers tend to limit the size of inventories, relying on airfreight directly from Intel to supply their requirements.

Intel, however, has been unable to air ship any microprocessors since Tuesday. "We think there is enough in the pipeline to keep customers going and we believe airfreight will begin very soon because there are no passenger security issues," Intel said.

The company said it was too early to ascertain the impact on September sales.

However, the massive slump in chip sales, will limit the effect of short-term disruption on most chip companies. Chipmakers continue to report very few "turn orders," these are orders that are to be delivered in the same quarter they are booked.

IT spending is estimated to be about 40 per cent of corporate capital spending and an average of 2 per cent of revenues.

On a positive note, Computer Economics estimated that the replacement costs for the IT and communications infrastructure destroyed in New York amounts to at least $15bn, which will boost US technology company sales by early next year.

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