This past summer, more than 68,000 video game fans packed the Los Angeles Convention Center for the Electronic Entertainment Expo (known as E3). For years only industry insiders and media representatives were invited to preview the latest titles and technology at this annual occasion. But in 2017 E3’s organizers opened up the convention to the public in order to involve even more people in what many consider to be gaming’s top event.
That is unless you live in Brazil. Next Continue reading
After its founding in 1892, General Electric spent decades growing into one of the country’s most successful companies. It continued to expand in the years following World War II, only this time GE began thinking globally rather than domestically. The company built its first international supply chains by establishing manufacturing centers in industrialized nations like France and Japan. By the 1990s GE moved on to developing economies like India and China where the company could produce items like jet engines Continue reading
Last week we looked at how Netflix has loaded on debt while developing a new slate of original content. Although the streaming giant is taking a big risk with this strategy, many entertainment industry insiders still think Netflix is in a much stronger position than traditional movie theaters. With attendance down 3 percent from 2016, AMC Entertainment recently downgraded its outlook for the rest of the film industry’s year. The announcement sent theater stocks tumbling and caused the top four Continue reading
This week we’ve taken a look at the effect mobile technology has had on Chinese businesses, both for better and worse. Of course, China is far from the only Asian nation to undergo drastic changes thanks to the rise of smartphones. From India to Indonesia, mobile technology has altered the ways that both consumers and businesspeople go about their lives. Still, perhaps no other place on the continent has been as fundamentally changed by smartphones as the country of Continue reading
On Tuesday Roman Klimenko headed into his Kiev accounting office for work just like he does every day. A few hours after he opened his tax preparation software, however, something went horribly wrong. “The screen became red,” said Klimenko. “A warning appeared, and everything on the hard drive was scrambled.” In a matter of moments he lost all of his filings from last year.
This same situation played out across tens of thousands of Ukrainian computers in that same instant. Continue reading
2017 has not been a good year so far for many retailers. Chains like J.C. Penney and Sears plan to close hundreds of locations while J. Crew has posted 11 consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales. But as these formerly powerful brands struggle, the Spanish fashion giant Zara is thriving like never before. This week its parent company Inditex announced that first quarter sales jumped 18 percent to $733.3 million. Plus, total sales for Zara topped out at $6.3 billion, Continue reading