The economic slump has bottomed out and optimism is returning, but it will take some time for business to return to more normal levels, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) International President Jean-Philippe Courtois said Monday.

Mr. Courtois’s comments echo those of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who told delegates at a Confederation of British Industry conference Monday that he expects the economy to stay weak and recover only slowly.

Still, Mr. Courtois was more optimistic on the outlook for emerging markets, which he said are doing well. Microsoft doesn’t separate out business performance geographically.

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Plenty of studies have shown, over and over again, that in an emerging market, the last thing you want is patent protection. It slows down innovation and adoption drastically. That’s because in a brand new emerging market, the bigger issue is actually figuring out how to get the market established.

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There’s lots of talk in the tech industry these days about capitalizing on growth in “emerging markets,” countries like China, Vietnam and Brazil where people are rapidly buying computers and printers.

A story in Monday’s Boston Globe says Hewlett-Packard Co. is taking that strategy one step further: Its printers, writes Farah Stockman, “have become a top seller” in Iran–a country whose economy the U.S. government wants to prevent from emerging.

Since 1995, the U.S. government has had an on embargo on trade between U.S. companies and Iran due to the Iranian government’s “sponsorship of international terrorism and Iran’s active pursuit of weapons of mass destruction,” according to a U.S. Treasury Department fact sheet.

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Cisco (CSCO) is apparently following through on its plan to reduce hiring.

Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Wachovia Capital Markets, does a weekly check on job listings for the companies he covers, and this week came across a “startling reduction in listings” by Cisco. In a research note this morning, he points out that the total number of listings has dropped 93 percent in the last week, from 1,830 openings a week ago to only 128 today. He notes that there were 2,678 jobs listed at the beginning of October. Listings for jobs in the U.S. and Canada fell to 52, from 675 a week ago. European listings dropped to 28, from 311. Asia/Pacific jobs fell to nine, from 162. Emerging markets openings fell to 36, from 643.

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Worldwide server sales rose 12.2 percent, year over year, to 2.3 million units, in the second quarter, declares research firm Gartner (IT) in a note today, while revenue was up 5.7 percent for a total of $13.8 billion. The main driver was the replacement of x86 servers, a trend that began in the first quarter, notes Gartner, but the expansion of data centers backing Web sites was also an important factor, as was growth in emerging markets.

IBM (IBM) held onto the top revenue spot, with 31.2 percent of revenue, up 11.5 percent from last year’s 29.6 percent. HP’s (HPQ) share of the dollars, yen and shekels fell to 27.6 percent from 28.4 percent on 3 percent revenue growth.

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