Oct 08
22
Tech Industry Starting To Feel The Pinch
News today has been inundated with companies announcing lay offs amid worries about the credit crunch, and a growth slow-down.
Firstly today, Imeem (a social music site) announce that they have made 25% of it’s workforce redundant. The reasons apparently due to not a lot money floating around in the market at the moment.
Then on the back of this, Jason Calacanis broke the news that Mahalo culled just under 10% of it’s staff too – saying that although there is plenty of money in the pot, due to potentially bad revenue from advertising over the next couple of years, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
No sooner had I drawn breath from the news, but it then appeared that Sandisk are in the throws of reducing it’s workforce too. Now I didn’t expect this industry to be hit by the global slowdown – after all, solid state memory is essential to so many gadgets – as long as those gadgets are continuing to be sold, of course.
Then there is the whole issue with Yahoo! moving 10% of it’s staff on, amid their yearly stock low of $13 a share. I think Microsoft are thanking their lucky stars now that they didn’t acquire the search company.
And what with the other news of Tesla, Pandora and others also cutting back, it’s fair to say that the economic crisis is starting to hit the tech industry. I say starting, because the big guns, like Apple, Google and Microsoft are doing very well at the moment. This can’t last forever of course – of those big three I see Apple being the most at risk of slow down, as they are essentially an iPod seller now (luxury?) followed by Google due to advertising revenues inevitably dropping, with Microsoft not seeing much of a change, being an essential part of most of our lives now.. That’s what I see, but then that’s only my opinion, and we all know what that counts for in the real world, right?