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Pataquès Government on the reform of the post2 times 2007 are higher than the market recognizesAnd the need for a mobile is a little lessChallenge to the transfer of businesses and their needsUnion attempts indeed never lasted longThe best revolutions are most often changesBut these initiatives eventually bear fruitSpace is also rare in the sector RaveziesThey should represent 25 of the emissions of companiesBut a judge can do everything at the same timeIn fall of 80, 48, 50, 66, 51, 53... The list could go on indefinitely. This is the sustained market slump by, respectively, Apple, Google, eBay, Intel, Cisco and Yahoo! in just two months. Is it to say that the U.S. technology industry, and especially Silicon Valley which is the emblem, must prepare for its second major crisis in the same decade
Between San Francisco and San Jose, where are concentrated more than 30,000 technology firms and more than a million high-tech jobs, we prepare. Last week, Sequoia Capital, one of the main local venture capital firms, brought together the hundreds of CEOs of start-ups it finances to their predict the worst. And inviting to tighten their belts. Other eminent colleagues have made Similarly, themselves provided the biggest difficulties to raise new funding which will then fund the start-up.
With regard to the heavy weight of the sector, HP announced recently nearly 25,000 redundancies. It is the result of the purchase of the company of EDS services, although Palo Alto constructor took the opportunity to load the boat. EBay, which barely find the path of strong growth, warned that he would break a thousand employees. Yahoo! is going to eliminate 1,000 positions. Many others have announced hiring reduced to a minimum in 2009.
But he was not sure that Silicon Valley must prepare for a mass exodus of its most brilliant computer, in the sudden bankruptcy of its best start-up, the evaporation of its order books, and a record unemployment, as after the collapse of the dot-com bubble. In 2001, the crisis hit violently region, more than any what other land in the United States or in the world, because it was at the heart of the Internet bubble blowing. With its collapse, its start-up funding is brutally INAT. In the aftermath, the local giants like Cisco or HP, which surfing on the wave of double-digit growth and déraisonnés financing, have also accused the coup.
Today, the situation is different. The crisis, whose effects are felt for several months already, is not technology but the American housing market. It should reach the high-tech industry, and particularly Silicon Valley by ricochet. The effect should be less violent, even though it looks sustainable. The other difference is that local firms are in a position much stronger than in the year 2000. Precisely because they appear several years of severe restructuring (already three plans for reduction of manpower for Sun Microsystems, for example). They are also much more healthy financially. Apple and Cisco have more than 20 billion dollars of cash each, Intel has more than 15, Oracle almost as much. And, indeed, be the only Silicon Valley, Oracle, Google, Intel and Apple come to announce very positive quarterly results. Start-ups, many have enough money to take one to two years in a difficult environment.
With regard to the effects of the crisis looming, it is expected, of course, budget reductions on the part of user companies, but they should not cut drastically in their high-tech purchases. First because that they are part of pluri-annuels investment programs and also because they are considered as a factor of competitiveness which it does not question to deprive. Especially in times of crisis. That is why both IDC Forrester predict that the U.S. market of information technologies should grow by 2 to 5 in 2009, except now unpredictable cataclysm.
For both, the personal PC market and public computer does escape perhaps not as well. While US household consumption has already strongly slowed, there is nothing to suggest that they will continue to buy as large plasma screen or the iPhone Internet TV even subsidized by operators. By extension, retail e-commerce and online advertising should also suffer from serious blows to brake. All perspectives that cloud the near future of firms such as Apple, but also activities of Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, the latter being more and more present on the consumer market.
In any event, the devastation and the consequences of the latest crisis are so close that Silicon Valley feels ready to face that. In fact, for the time being, a certain serenity prevails. Even if many things will change in the coming months. "We will continue to invest in innovative start-ups, provides one of the major investors in the region, but probably in a different way. In fact, they will now focus on companies offering innovations further break with the existing, even if it means more distant returns on investment. As it did after the bursting of the bubble, the region will again adopt a low profile, showing more discrete about what is happening in its laboratories. But not so slow the pace of innovation. The example of this new approach was provided, last week, Tesla Motors, icon of the region, which produces the first car to sport (to $ 100,000) electric motor. Its founder, Elon Musk, who has made a fortune selling PayPal to eBay, partly finance the start-up. As "chairman", he comes to dismiss its CEO to announce layoffs, and delayed to 2011 of the first car manufactured in series. Only to be able to hold longer with current financial reserves and to give time to a new technological jump...
