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BT’s results for the December quarter saw continuing trends of gradual improvement at BT Retail and efficient deployment of next generation access at Openreach, plus strong control of unallocated property costs, enabling management to issue slightly improved group-level guidance for the current financial year to March

Cash flow growth at group level continued to be compromised by the cost of overseas expansion at Global Services and a continuing shift to LLU and IP-based services at BT Wholesale

Improved guidance suggests that progress at Retail and Openreach is sufficiently strong to generate positive, if modest growth in cash flow at group level, despite the slower pace of improvement at other divisions and a challenging economic environment

Sky’s 16% year-on-year increase in interim profits reflects strong operating efficiencies and reduced marketing costs due to the slowdown of TV gross additions in a tough economic climate, while continuing low churn underlines its product strengths

Fibre broadband deployment and the January launch of streaming-only services by Lovefilm and Netflix signal increasingly competitive conditions, but Sky is well placed and the challenges should take several years to materialise

Sky management is fully aware of the need for its pay-TV business model to evolve in the age of digital convergence, where innovation and building value are prerequisites of success, and is actively addressing the issues

With the economy drifting sideways, we have set our centre case forecasts at 0-1% average annual growth in TV NAR and assigned a low probability to a repeat of the hyper-cyclical downturn of 2008/9

Comparative international data show a pervasive long term weakness in display advertising trends across the developed world, while emerging markets in Asia, Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe take an increasing share of global budgets

With digital switchover near completion, channel viewing shares across the main commercial groups should stabilise, but internet advertising, especially online video, will exert a negative structural downward pressure on TV NAR over the next three years at least

Apple has begun selling interactive textbooks via its iBookstore, a move which is likely to accelerate the digital transition in education

However, the pace of change will be slowed by the cost of devices and the limited number of textbooks that have been designed for tablet computers

By developing educational software and course materials, Apple is trying to position the iPad at the centre of students’ educational lives – a niche that could significantly boost its hardware sales

Rumours that News International will consider launching a newspaper to replace the News of the World have circulated for months, and probably only one event can dispel them

Trinity Mirror has picked up the bulk of the 60% of NoW copies that have not entirely fallen out of the market since June 2011, and arguably the longer any launch is delayed the harder it will be for NI to attract them back

The £150 million revenue once generated by NoW is diminished and dispersed among rival publishers and we estimate that even a triumphant launch would likely generate half to two thirds of the income of the closed title

Carphone Warehouse’s Q3 2011/12 volume and revenue was severely hit by a steep reduction in UK prepay volumes, with prepay subsidy cuts driving a drop in the UK market of as much as 40%

However, stronger volumes of higher margin contract handsets drove a small improvement in gross profit for the quarter

The unexpected prepay weakness means that Carphone Warehouse’s handset business will have roughly flat operating profit in its 2011/12 financial year at best, although given the negative external factors this would reflect a strong underlying performance

US album volumes in 2011 rose for the first time since 2004, but lower pricing may continue the revenue decline

UK album volumes declined 5.6% in 2011. HMV’s new-found breathing space removes a key risk for the outlook

US radio royalties to music publishers have been agreed in principle and will see a return to a revenue based payment

Google’s UK revenue grew 23% to £676 million in Q4 2011, taking 2011 revenue to £2,525 million, up 20% year-on-year, 2 ppts below our November estimate

Globally, gross revenue rose 25% year-on-year, with mobile and display performing strongly, but rising costs pulled net revenue growth down to 8%

Our growth forecasts for Google’s UK revenue remain unchanged; we expect UK internet ad spend to rise from £4.7 billion last year to £5.8 billion by 2013, representing 35% of total advertising, as print continues to fall