The Implosion. The last 3 months were just the beginning. We've had a taste of it with APB.com (dumb idea), and DEN. But what I'm talking about here is the ultimate failure of some of the more high-profile e-businesses. We just heard today about NBCi's earnings shortfalls, and Reel.com's closing up shop. Those new-IPO dot.coms from last year are going to hit the wall and we will see many more failures. E-toys, E-parties, Petstore.com, Homegrocer.com, etc., etc. are all on the ropes, so it will get worse before it gets better. The rate of new companies coming into this scene will slow to a trickle.
Now these are the e-tailing companies - I don't think that b2b will be affected yet, and the infrastructure companies might be ok too. Again, growth in overseas markets will be key for F5 to continue it's success IMHO.
It's inevitable that these companies fail. They overforecast their revenues, underestimated their expenses (read: marketing), overpaid their executives, the market overvalued their worth, and many of these ideas were just plain stupid. I mean, how many online petstores do we need? |
