back to article Strong dollar will deal death to US firms' overseas growth

2015 is shaping up to be “pretty awful” for US tech vendors, which have been hit by a one-two of strong international competition and a strong US dollar. That’s according to Forrester, which reckons global tech purchases in local currencies will grow by 3.6 per cent this year – down from the 5.3 per cent growth forecast in …

  1. Ole Juul

    US Servers

    Don't know about storage, but I keep tabs on server prices around the world and even with the high dollar, the US is still by far the most affordable - even at 150ms pings to Europe. The new data sovereignty laws popping up all over the place may be more of a sticking point though.

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    It's a race to the bottom

    "Strong dollar" == "Less in the shitter paper currency"

    Mario Draghi is friendly, making sure that his friends are well rewarded, debts are expunged without effort and people are secretly taxed, all to keep the EUR dead, deader, deadest.

    Let's go on, Weimar when?!

  3. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Fantastic!

    This is great news for Australia! Our manufacturing and high-tech industry can vastly improve on our exports with the collapsed Aussie dollar playing to our advantage!

    What's that? We HAVE no more manufacturing? We never really had a high-tech industry? We only have coal and cattle? And China isn't buying what we're digging out of the ground anymore?

    Oh dear... did somebody tell our mongrel politicians (regardless of the party)?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fantastic!

      Look on the bright side, you fellas down under did manage to export the Ashes this summer ;)

      1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge

        Re: Fantastic!

        <desperately thinks of counterpoint> Uhm, I heard the Aussie women won theirs?!

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Fantastic!

      We shut down all our industry to concentrate on selling oil to the US and coal to China.

      And we did it with the most expensive to extract oil on earth - go Canada.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great news for executives

    2016: Report earnings in "constant currency", show great growth, don't mention that actual revenues are down 15%, and so on. Then internally say that there was no actual growth of revenue, so there's no budget for raises.

    2017: Report earnings in actual dollars, show great growth, never mind that constant currency says you're almost flat. Then internally say that there was no growth of revenue in constant currency, so there's no budget for raises.

  5. Otto is a bear.

    Thing is

    Aren't most US tech companies actually multi-national, so the kit you produce overseas is cheaper to import, and if you hold your prices, your margin increases. Your IP prices are expressed in dollars, so your prices go up overseas, maintaining your margin, and forcing up the price of overseas produced using US IP.

  6. Mark 85

    The deeper/darker side..

    I suspect that the reason China devalued it's currency was two-fold. By making it weaker against the dollar, it made imported goods cost more. A bit of protectionism one might say. With imported goods going up, the locals will buy Chinese made goods and hopefully employment will increase. Also, the price of their exported goods will be low.

    I'm not sure how this will affect the move by the manufacturers that are moving their off-shore business from China to India. Foxcomm in particular (amongst others) is and has been moving for labor costs. The devalued currency may induce them to hang around in China for a few more years.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The deeper/darker side..

      Despite that blip of devaluation, the Yuan has still appreciated on a trade-weighted basis. They need to devalue it more seriously than that. Especially if they are serious about switching to an internal consumption weighting.

      As for: "The analyst expects a return to growth next year, at a rate of 4.4 per cent, saying it thinks the weakening of the euro and other currencies against the dollar is temporary." Think again as the dollar is going to be the first to go off Quantitative Easy before anyone else. especially the Euro. Now that we've gone down the "rabbit-hole" getting back out with the skin and teeth intact is going to be "interesting" in the Chinese proverbial sense of the word.

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