Here’s some stuff I’ve been reading:
The fourth quarter is critical for eBay. Rather like Woolworths that apparently used to make 90% of it’s profits in December, ‘the holiday season’ is vital. It looks like eBay hasn’t had the Q4 it must have hoped for. But we shan’t know for sure until the results are published in 2009. Gigaom analysed traffic earlier in the month and suggested that eBay was no longer recession proof. Techcrunch published traffic figures yesterday that looked great for Amazon and not as glittering for eBay. But traffic is just that. It’s all about sales and we don’t know those yet even if Amazon are being very bullish. eBay sellers I’ve spoken seem to be indicating they’ve had a good Christmas.
Looking ahead to 2009, there are predictions galore. Ina Steiner of Auctionbytes makes some sober forecasts. Randy is more jaunty and salacious: predicting eBay CEOs John Donohoe’s departure and possibly the splitting of the business. Not sure about farewell JD but I’d say a Skype sell-off has great merits and would be organisationally quite easy. Sue at Tamebay manages to quote Heraclitus but makes the right point regarding the economy being critical to eBay’s fortunes in 2009, specifically in Europe. All worth a read.
“But we shan’t know for sure until the results are published in 20009.”
I wont hold my breath then!!!
LOL
Oops. Amended.
manages to quote Heraclitus but
You make it sound like that’s a bad thing.