Tech Vendors Gets Hammered In The Journal

January 15th 2009 Posted to Economics, Recession, Vendors

stock_crashI probably shouldn’t admit it in public — considering I’m a social media analyst — but I subscribe to the daily print edition of the Wall Street Journal. This morning I had just finished running through the paper when it realized that I hadn’t seen such a brutal collection of news about tech companies in quite some time.

To wit: Here are the headlines on the front page of the Marketplace section.

  1. “In rare move, Microsoft is exploring job cuts“
  2. “Nortel Networks files for chapter 11″
  3. “Smurfit says bankruptcy is possible amid crunch” (Smurfit-Stone is a cardboard manufacturer)
  4. “Motorola to cut 4,000 more jobs as cellphone sales collapse by half”

Of 23 total articles in the section, 9 (39%) were about tech companies and they were almost universally negative — and that doesn’t even include the front page article about Steve Job’s health. The only positive news was “IBM plans new center in Iowa.” Needless to say, the market is down, and the tech market is down right along with it. Granted Motorola and Nortel have been in trouble for a while, but Microsoft, Google, and Seagate are all well run companies. If there was any illusion that the tech industry might not get hit in the recession the Journal blew it away.

Rest of the tech headlines:

  1. “IBM plans new data center in Iowa”
  2. “Goolge plans 100 layoffs of recruiters”
  3. “Bartz eases some hurdles to Yahoo-Microsoft deal”
  4. “Satyam seeks leaders, names auditors”
  5. “Growth in world-wide PC shipments levels off”
  6. “Seagate slashes salaries”

View Comments

  • Hi Susan, thanks for the comment. Its clearly getting ugly out there, though its good to hear that Austin Ventures is still investing.

    While I would expect things to be quite painful for a while -- my colleague Andy Bartels is predicting a 3% decline in global IT spending in 2009 -- the silver lining is this should set up nicely for an innovation explosion as we come out of the downturn. There will be a lot of talented engineers with time to spend innovating.
  • Hi Oliver. I thought the same thing yesterday. I was stopping for breakfast tacos at my local waterhole and happened to pick up the local Austin paper, The Statesman. Headlines in the business section were filled with grim tech news. The only good news was the local VC, Austin Ventures, was still investing. Amen for that. See photo on flickr: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3338/3200818263_051b80e23a_o.jpg
blog comments powered by Disqus