Now that the elections are over and the Congress has a new controlling party, there is speculation that the business picture may get brighter. But in Silicon Valley, there are ominous trends that point towards another tough year for the tech industry and perhaps worse beyond that.
For a long time, the lifeblood of high tech growth has been venture capital investment. But there are growing signs that venture money is in a period of serious pullback. The Cambridge Associates U.S. Venture Capital Index has reported that venture capital returned a measly 8.4 percent to investors over the last ten years. This comes on the heels of more bad news from Ernst and Young who announced last month that venture capital investing is down nearly 50 percent for the first half of 2010.
Meanwhile, other major world economies, such as China and United Arab Emirates (UAE) are using government funds to make big bets on technology investment that could rapidly eclipse U.S. dominance in the high-tech market. This column recently spoke with a high-ranking U.S. tech trade executive who did not want to be identified by name because of his group’s sensitive relations with both the U.S. government and foreign countries, but he was happy to talk about what he was seeing internationally.
To read the full, original article click on this link: While the U.S. fiddles, the rest of the tech world grows - San Francisco Technology | Examiner.com
Author: Mark Albertson
