THE TECHNOLOGY industry has never been more economically important. The biggest five Silicon Valley firms now make up about 20% of the value of the s&p 500 stockmarket index of big American companies. Yet until recently no one had much idea of how these vast, essential businesses would fare in an economic downturn. When the last slump started in 2007, Facebook was only four years old, Amazon was a twentieth of its size today, and Apple made more cash from Mac computers than from iPhones. So how is big tech doing? An obvious-and frequently made-point is that the industry is thriving amid a savage recession as people spend more time on screens and work remotely. Look closer, however, and the picture is more complex. The industry is tilting away from business models that ruled in the past decade, towards a new era of subscriptions, e-commerce and business infrastructure. A simple way of putting it is that tech's spiritual centre of gravity is moving from San Francisco to Seattle.
展开▼
