But from the looks of things right now, Gemstar-TV Guide's star seems to be fading fast.
Pure gravy for Gemstar, since it kicks back just 15% of the ad revenues to the participating cable company.
Gemstar sells a paperback-size device with an 11.5cm-by-7.5cm screen and a magazine-size tablet with a 15cm-by-20cm screen.
For now at least, Gemstar is mostly selling glorified banner ads that sit silently on the margin of the guide.
Ibiquity's business plan is modeled after wildly profitable licensing firms such as Qualcomm (for digital cellular)and Gemstar (for onscreen TV guides).
"The whole concept is to try to reproduce the reading experience and make it a little bit better, " says Henry Yuen, Gemstar's CEO.
With name recognition built on 50 years of TV Guide magazine and a clever product for next-generation televisions, Gemstar isn't going to disappear.
Narayan got a vote of confidence from Gemstar-TV Guide, the leader in interactive TV guides, which tried to buy the company in 1998.
But consider: No major cable operator has signed a long-term contract for Gemstar's TV GuideInteractive the company's main growth engine since it was launched last year.
Yuen, number 211 as late as 2001, whose Gemstar (electronic TV program guide) rose and fell and who last month pled guilty to related felony securities charges.
Both Rocket and SoftBook have been purchased by Gemstar, the people who provide many on-screen TV program guides and the same people who just bought TV Guide.
Gemstar says it has 135 customers, including 100 cable operators.
But if Gemstar prevails, it will be seen as a big positive for the company and could set the stage for a favorable outcome in Gemstar's civil patent lawsuits.
The new company will include News Corp's Asian star TV company, its 37.5% stake in Britain's BSkyB, its south American assets and its stake in US interactive TV company GemStar.
But other big players are digging in:The set-top box makers Scientific-Atlanta and Pioneer and the satellite provider EchoStar lobbed antitrust actions against Gemstar after Yuen had hit them with patent suits.
And, ominously, a cadre of four of its biggest cable customers, sick of Gemstar's near-monopoly, have developed a competing interactive guide that was painstakingly designed to avoid infringing Gemstar's patent portfolio.
News of the delay sent Gemstar stock plummeting to lows it hadn't seen since 1999, since it will likely make potential programming guide partners hold off from doing any new deals with the company.
There's yet another catch for Gemstar: TV Guide Interactive was built for a high-speed set-top box, Motorola's DCT 5000, which was promised months ago but held back because of high costs and software integration glitches.
Set-top box manufacturers and satellite-TV providers are fighting Gemstar to keep their own guides, and now four large U.S. cable companies are mobilizing to launch a service that will go head on with Gemstar's interactive guide.
Time Warner Cable, the U.S.' second-largest operator, says it has no plans to switch to TV Guide Interactive from the Scientific-Atlanta and Pioneer guides it now uses even though its parent AOL is in the middle of a long-term license agreement with Gemstar.
Here's a taste of the tough game Yuen plays: EchoStar claims that Gemstar offered not to sue it if it switched program guides to Gemstar's, passed 90% of advertising revenues and 75% of e-commerce revenues to Gemstar, carried all of Gemstar's TV channels and sent all its customers TV Guide magazine.
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