Here again is my annual assessment of the Bay Area's Economic Engine. Feel free to download it for your own use... and as always feel free to call or write me with questions or comments!
Warning... data alone does not
tell the whole story
If you just look at the data, you might see the recent boom
in San Francisco and Silicon Valley has slowed slightly; the Bay Area added
52,000 jobs in the 12 months ending October 31st, 2013, compared to 99,000 in
calendar year 2012.
I predicted this "slowdown" in last year’s Bay
Area Economic Engine. Here's what I wrote then:
Much of the 2010-2012 surge in employment and demand for
space was due to companies with disruptive technologies… As these innovations
gain market they replace something else. In 2010-2012 these winning companies
were launching and growing while the losing companies were still in place. Now
we are beginning to see the fallout from the disruptive technologies; upcoming
layoffs being announced for chip manufacturers, network equipment
manufacturers, PC’s, console video game companies and companies that produced
products made redundant by the smartphone…
And so it was... 2013 saw major layoffs... HP 28,000, Cisco
4,000, Lockheed 4000, EMC 1,000, Electronic Arts 900, Symantec 800. But the
magic of the Bay Area tech culture is “creative destruction”… Google moves into
500,000 sf of space at the old Mayfield Mall in Mountain View last occupied by
HP. Oracle buys and decimates Siebel Systems and that San Mateo space becomes a
1,000,000 sf campus for Sony’s PlayStation group.
Watch
corporate IT spending and know the health of Silicon Valley?
Not true this year... 2013 proved this adage to be wrong.
With corporate IT spending flat, cuts in defense spending, sequestration,
personal computer sales falling, Intel missing the tablet market and computer
gaming companies suffering, you might expect Silicon Valley to be on its rear.
Emerging technologies more than compensated... smart phones,
tablets, social networking, cloud computing, the consumerization of IT ....
these technology trends are still in their infancy and are all are growing up
in the Bay Area.
What does that mean for the Bay Area? The headwinds we saw last year are largely
behind us and with the overall US economy recovering; our Bay Area Tech Boom
may just be beginning.
DOWNLOAD the 2013 Bay Area Economic Engine by clicking here
DOWNLOAD the 2013 Bay Area Economic Engine by clicking here
