Anybody else notice how much bad company news there’s been post-CES? Digeo killed its planned retail products and laid off half its staff. Sprint is eliminating 4,000 jobs. Yahoo hasn’t announced specific numbers, but the word is that “1,500-2,500 jobs may be eliminated in the next two weeks.” (There’s an interesting post on GigaOM on how Yahoo can still turn itself around.) Heck, even Comcast is battling right now. (Though, despite the stock, I believe the company is in pretty darn good position.) A key investor is calling for Brian Roberts’ head.
So what’s the takeaway? We should all remember next year at CES 2009 that all the happy talk can be just a smokescreen for what’s going on behind the scenes. After all, who’s going to let out their bad news at the biggest show of the year? Apparently everyone would rather wait for later in January.