ICT Expo, Ireland's largest technology conference, opened yesterday amid a sustained industry downturn which has led to savage cost-cutting and restructuring for many firms in the high-tech sector.

The event showcases a range of products, including the first demonstration in Ireland of third-generation mobile technology, which should offer Irish consumers video on mobile devices by 2005.

EDS, the US technology firm, also chose the conference as the venue to announce the creation of an additional 140 jobs for its Dublin operations.

The firm, which specialises in outsourcing, should employ 500 people at its facility by next year.

But the mood at the conference - which has been created from the merger of two high-tech events that could not garner enough support to stand alone - was cautious.

Corporate executives, who will staff the 100 high-tech stands at the RDS, Dublin until tomorrow evening, spoke hopefully of recovery later in the year, but most focused on the latest industry buzz words - "return on investment".

"In the past, during the boom, people developed technology for its own sake ... The tech industry has now grown up," said Mr Clive Sawkins, vice-president of sales at Avaya, a US firm which develops communications technologies.

"Financial directors are running businesses now and they want to know what money they save through technology spending."

Event organisers focused on statistics showing that six out of 10 firms were confident about their business for 2002 and were predicting a recovery by October.

A profit warning from the industry bellwether IBM, issued on the eve of the conference, did little to settle the nerves of sales managers.

But most firms claimed things were better now than last year.

In the past three to six months, the market had come back and confidence was now being restored, said Mr Stephen Forsythe, business development director at Nevada tele.com.

Nevada, which supplies telecoms services North and South, operates in one of the most difficult sectors of the market, which has already seen several competitors go bust.

Surprisingly, neither the telephony division of Eircom, and its main competitor, Esat, are taking part in ICT Expo. But mobile phone firm Digifone provided the highlight of the show yesterday by demonstrating third-generation technology for the first time in the Republic.

Digifone proved that colour screens and a range of new video applications for mobile devices were on their way.

But as with the high-tech recovery, it could take longer than expected to arrive. The latest estimate is 2005.