As demand for the boxes crumbles, it would be very bad, indeed, for the two companies that dominate the U.S. set-top box business.
FORBES: Did Microsoft Just Kill The Cable Set-Top Box Business?
Virgin Media ( VMED - news - people ) in the U.K. is using TiVo's set-top box and software as the cornerstone of its advanced TV rollout to its 4 million subscribers.
While the U.S. trends toward big-box retail and mixed-use centers for shopping and living, Asia is putting up bigger, glitzier malls than ever.
Even though big-box centers across the U.S. still are struggling with vacancies lingering from the liquidation of retailers such as Borders, Circuit City and Linens N' Things, the industry's average vacancy rate has declined in recent years.
WSJ: Landlords Prefer Deals LIke Office Depot-OfficeMax to Liquidations
For starters, Marshall, a U.S. president played by box-office king Harrison Ford in this summer's "Air Force One, " is a highly decorated Vietnam pilot.
These proved popular and inspired the company to adopt the same model in New York and other large U.S. cities where the big-box approach was less popular and the necessary real estate prohibitively expensive.
Dollar retailers are hot among value investors, who find their liquid inventories and low margins attractive, compared with larger big-box discount retailers in the U.S. which must contend with food inflation costs and competitive pricing.
Now a show of some of the finest examples of the genre is making a five-city U.S. tour (see box).
In the fourth quarter, the average vacancy for big-box centers in the top 60 U.S. markets was 6.1%, down from a recent high of 7.4% in the first quarter of 2010, according to real-estate research firm Reis Inc.
WSJ: Landlords Prefer Deals LIke Office Depot-OfficeMax to Liquidations
Rush Hour, Chan's new action-comedy-thriller, set box office records in the U.S. and is about to do the same across Asia.
Virgin Media in the U.K. is using TiVo's set-top box and software as the cornerstone of its advanced TV rollout to its 4 million subscribers.
His 1995 album Stanley Road and 2002's Illumination both topped the U.K. charts, and last year, he released a four-disc box set of amazing singles, dating back to his days with The Jam.
Wii U has to make the case to turn to it rather than a set-top box connected TV, competing games console - Xbox's extensive range of TV partners makes it a formidable competitor in this respect - and even a tablet or smartphone.
Wal-Mart, the pioneer of the big-box retail format, is seeing a steady rise in its number of U.S. stores.
FORBES: Wal-Mart Stores Keep Sprouting Up, Stock Heads To $65
By making Iron Man 3 as a U.S.-China coproduction, Disney would collect a 38% cut of the box office as befits a domestic film.
Apple is in talks with some of the largest U.S. cable operators about letting consumers use an Apple device as a set-top box for live TV.
" Now that it's set to hit U.S stores on Nov. 19, the box will sell, oddly, as the Wii--pronounced "we.
In the U.S., the traditional shopping mall is part of a saturated market, thanks to big-box retailers and retail-industry consolidation that wiped once-popular anchor stores like Montgomery Ward from the landscape.
As Light in the Box moves toward going public in the U.S. at a time when few venture-backed Chinese companies are getting out of the gate, it helps to have a strategy that Wall Street can grasp.
FORBES: Beijing Startup Builds On Shoulders Of Giants To Go Global And IPO From China
U.S. retailers of all stripes super-sized their stores over the past two decades after big-box chains demonstrated the benefits of being larger than the competition.
应用推荐