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.
At least one company held back their good news as well – announcing it the week after CES. They had a perfect opportunity to brief press on the new product offering at the show… and instead gave me the run-around when I quizzed them on this sort of functionality.
Speaking of the bad news and bleeding, the rate cut this AM was a surprise.
Digg it!
http://digg.com/tech_news/Yahoo_Please_Put_Up_A_Fight
Well, we’re in a recession, and so people are dropping their expensive packages and going back to basics. And of course Verizon is starting to hurt Comcast, taking the top tier customers in their top tier markets away. Comcast put up a lot of bluster at CES but that stuff is going to take forever for them to roll out nationally. The “rate shaping” news isn’t helping their image any either.
speaking of rate cut, i watched a movie on instant netflix yesterday called maxed out, documentary on consumer credit, i highly recommend it.