Tech Industry Being Hit by Downturn
The tech industry, which has remained long-insulated from the economic downturn, partly due to lessons learnt following the dotcom bubble bust, is starting to feel the pressure of the problems.
John reported earlier this week that Google’s share price has crashed to below $300 and yesterday Sun Microsystems became the latest in a line of bellwethers to report heavy job cuts.
From The San Francisco Chronicle, story by Tom Abate:
Sun Microsystems said Friday it will eliminate 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, or more than 15 percent of its workforce, becoming the latest Silicon Valley firm to suffer from the widening economic downturn.
Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, eBay, Applied Materials and SanDisk are among other tech firms that have announced deep cuts in recent weeks, and bellwether firms Intel and Cisco have preannounced sales slowdowns.
Many startups have also cut jobs as the economic slump that began in housing and infected the financial sector undermines tech niches from chips to computing.
After broadly managing to stay strong during the downturn, the crash in advertising and the cutbacks on technology spending across a number of sectors is starting to hit home for the manufacturers while the likes of eBay, Google and Yahoo are also starting to feel the heat from the consumer downturn, along with plateauing digital advertising spend levels. Times, it seems, are tough for all market sectors right now.
