Word: robustness
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...Nick Gibson, analyst at Games Investor Consulting, says that while the $7.85 billion RPG market is expected to increase by a healthy 27% this year, the micropayments submarket will grow by an even more robust 40% to 50%. That's partly because customers seem to prefer not being locked into playing just one or two online games by stiff up-front charges and subscriptions. And, freed from paying a set fee each month, some players actually end up spending more. Four years ago, Shanda Interactive Entertainment, China's biggest online-game developer, ditched subscriptions for the freemium model and turned...
...first, the idea of surfers riding waves within view of Chicago's iconic skyline may seem bizarre. But this city has long had robust beaches. This spring, Chicago opened its newest beach, on the South Side, and a former resident of the South Side - the city's favorite adopted son, Hawaiian-born President Barack Obama - is a surfer, although it's hard to imagine him ever taking to the shores of Lake Michigan. The city's beaches have more than a century's worth of history. In the 1890s, a group of prominent Chicagoans, including doctors and businessmen, lobbied...
Those bullish on global economic recovery have their data points: the steady upward climb of world stock markets, three straight months of Chinese manufacturing expansion, the weak dollar. But there are still plenty of skeptics of a rapid and robust turnaround, with their own set of numbers to cite: continued bleeding of private-sector jobs in the U.S. and Europe, more record lows in new home construction, and, er, the weak dollar. (Watch TIME's video of Peter Schiff trash-talking the markets...
That's to say, before you run out to start an import-export business, take a look at some other numbers in the shipping world that are far less robust. Shipping by container, typically finished goods, remains troublingly cheap, a sign that consumer products are still not flowing between continents. The price for a 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container on an East Asia-to-Europe voyage is reportedly currently maxing out at a paltry $500. Though the pace of the drop in rates has slowed, there are signs that charter prices have still not bottomed out, having dipped below...
...completion in the coming months and years. "There are new and larger ships on order," notes the source. "I fear that overall rates will not be as responsive to the recovery as a whole." In other words, just as skyrocketing prices in raw-material transport don't guarantee a robust global recovery, nor would a sluggish rebound in shipping profits preclude a bullish outlook for the overall economy...