A survey of nearly 300 electronics supply chain decision makers on the current business environment shows little change in sentiment from the first quarter, says VentureOutsource.com, which conducted the survey with IDC.

Respondents overall view the current market situation as they did during the firm's April survey, with an average score for the survey's Current Index of 4.6 out of 10, the same as four months ago. Also, as before, respondents were slightly more optimistic regarding the future, as the survey's Future Index came in at 5.1 out of 10, 5 percent higher than in April and 10 percent higher than the Current Index.

This indicates a meaningful increase in optimism about the future, yet still no sign of irrational exuberance, or even a serious recovery before the end of 2009, according to VentureOutsource.com.

Respondents were most pessimistic regarding the economic and employment situation, with average scores of 3.9 and 4.3 out of 10, respectively. These scores were also a little worse than in April.

"Feelings about the future economic situation are up nearly 9 percent from our last survey. In the end, though, these results show a belief that business will improve, but we believe that an actual broad-based expansion of business activity is not expected across the electronics supply chain in the next one or two quarters," says Mark Zetter, president of VentureOutsource.com.

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