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Silicon Valley's biggest winners and losers in 2008

HP biggest $ riser, Symantec biggest $ loss

The MercuryNews.com 2008 Silicon Valley 150 rankings show Data Domain making the biggest annual percentage sales gain out of all the IT companies in the list at 122 per cent to $274.1m. Symantec made the biggest loss of all at -$6.6bn.

The SV150 rankings compare companies on their 2008 versus 2007 performance. Looking just at the IT companies 3PAR was the seventh highest percentage sales gainer overall, at 83 per cent to $171.1m.

Rackable was ranked number 10 in the largest percentage sales drop category, at -30 per cent to $248m. For those Silicon Valley residents worried about jobs, third ranked HP had the largest workforce rise at 87 per cent to 321,000. Apple grew its headcount 48 per cent to 32,000 and BlueCoat Systems 46 per cent to 1,033.

The largest IT supplier percentage workforce falls were Adaptect at -35 per cent to 391, Quantum -29 per cent to 2,050 and Rambus -25 per cent to 330. Continuing the dismal numbers, Sun ranked six in the biggest dollar sales drop category, with -$696m to $13.3bn. SanDisk ranked ten with a $545m slump to $3.3bn.

The largest losses in 2008 compared to 2007 were Symantec, ranked first of all at -$6.3bn, AMD number two through losing $3bn, SanDisk at number three with -$2.1bn and Sun was in fourth place, losing $1.8bn. Then Palm comes in at number nine with a loss of $681.7m, followed by number ten LSI with its loss of $622.3m.

On a much more cheerful note, HP was the biggest dollar riser of all in revenue terms, at $11bn. Apple was second with $6.5bn, Google third with $5.2bn, Oracle fourth with $2.6bn, and Cisco sixth with a rise of $1.89bn.

Looking at the SV150, the good news for some was very good but the bad news for others was very bad. The ones hit by the double whammy of major business performance problems, worsened by the recession saw sales speeding south. They'll be looking very hard indeed for green shoots of recovery. ®

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