• GigaOm, Tuesday, December 23, 2008 11 AM

The tech sector better buckle its safety belt in preparation for a bleak2009, says GigaOm's Om Malik, who writes that the impact from the credit crunch and the overall slowdown in the global economy will be felt "across the entire ecosystem." How bad is it? "The problem is three times worse than everybody thinks," says Terry Gou, chairman of a large Taiwan-based contract manufacturer whose customers include Apple, Nintendo and HP.

Malik points out that semiconductor sales are down 16.3%, and PCs and mobile handsets, "the twin drivers of technology demand", are also in the midst of sales slumps. Handset maker Sony Ericsson, for example, is on pace to sell 6 million fewer phones in the fourth quarter of this year than last year, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue. And sales are expected to be worse further down the line: "Internal plans indicate SNE may end 2009 with units down as much as -20% YoY," Sue writes in a research note.

As for online advertising, Malik has been bearish about the sector before: "We know the housing and financial sector-related ads have already declined drastically, now we're going to start to see other sectors cut back on advertising, too -- and that is going to have a negative impact on everyone from large social networks to ad networks to Yahoo and Google to small startups, including weblogs like ours."

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