Well, it looks like the folks in Washington have done it. The device, called "sequestration," that imposes mandatory across-the-board cuts in Federal defense and non-defense spending is actually going into effect. That mechanism was created back in 2011 at the time of the US debt ceiling crisis as an outcome so terrible that it would force Republicans and Democrats to find a compromise that starts reducing the US Federal deficit. Instead, it has itself become the compromise between a Republican plan that would impose all of the planned $85 billion in budget cuts in the current fiscal year on non-defense spending, and an Obama proposal for $85 billion in tax increases, future cuts in entitlement spending, and selected defense and non-defense cuts. Republicans would rather see actual cuts in current US spending, even if that cuts spending on defense, their favorite category of Federal spending, rather than support any increase in taxes. And Democrats would rather see cuts in non-defense discretionary spending rather than in Social Security or Medicare, even if that means many of their favorite Federal programs will face cuts.  

Haven't we seen this show before?  Like last year?  Once again, Europe wrestles with and is again losing against its debt crisis.  Once again, after some promising growth in late 2011, the US economy is showing signs of losing steam.  Once again, China and India are flashing distress signals.  And once again, John Boehner and the Congressional Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the US debt ceiling unless US Federal spending is cut sharply. 

Last year, the mid-year economic troubles did take their toll on tech purchases in the third and four quarters of 2011, but a last-minute resolution to the US debt ceiling issue, the European Central Bank's aggressive lending to banks so they could buy Italian and Spanish government debt, and some strength in US consumer spending, Germany's surprisingly strong growth, and continued growth in China revived global economic growth in Q4 2011 and into Q1 2012.  Much depends on whether this pattern of slump and revival will recur again in 2012.   My bet  is that we will in fact see the same pattern. 

So, let's look at the economic evidence, and then the tech market evidence. 

• US economy slows but continues to grow.  In the US, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis on May 31 revised down Q1 2o12 real GDP growth to 1.9% from 2.1% in the preliminary report, and on June 1 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a disappointing 69,000 increase in payroll employment in May, the second month of sub-100,000 job growth.  On a more positive note, US retailers and auto makers reported good sales growth in May, while gas prices at the pump continued to fall from peaks earlier.   My take is that we will see real GDP growth in the 1.5% to 2% range in the remainder of 2012, down from my earlier assumption of 2% to 2.5% growth. 

On March 20, 2012, Oracle released its financial results for the quarter ending February 28, 2012, and Accenture did the same on March 22, 2012. Both had generally positive results, but with different implications for the software, hardware, and services markets of which they are a part. In short, we think the software and computer equipment market will do better in Q1 2012 than Oracle’s results suggest, while the IT services market will not do as well as Accenture did.

At the end of December 2011, I wrote about the top ten tech market events of 2011. Last Friday, we published our global tech market forecasts for 2012 and 2013 (see January 6, 2012, “Global Tech Market Outlook For 2012 And 2013 — Eight Themes Will Shape Vendors' Prospects Over The Next Two Years”) . With that report now live, I would like to share the top ten things that I will be monitoring in 2012 because of their potential impacts on how the tech market will perform in 2012. Some of these things are macroeconomic developments that could hurt or help tech market demand. Others are supply-side or vendor-related events or trends that will define winners and losers in whatever tech demand does emerge. As with my top ten 2011 tech market events, these are counted down in reverse order of importance: