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An article on the Apple ebook price fixing trial quoted Benedict Evans. “It is a kind of lying with statistics issue here,” he explained. “Depending on which averages you pick and which samples you pick, the number will move.”
Apple’s iTunes will add free-to-the-user online and mobile radio to the platform in the autumn of 2013, meshing music purchase with enhanced tools for discovery.
iTunes Radio also meshes with Match, the cloud-based music storage and retrieval utility sold for $24.99/year, whose users will enjoy ad-free online and mobile radio.
The main casualty of iTunes Radio is likely to be #1 US internet station Pandora, which this week launched the next phase of its battle to win the better royalty terms of commercial radio.
An article on the FT's Tech Blog quoted Benedict Evans in its round-up of analyst opinion on Apple's new iOS 7 mobile operating system.
“It takes some getting used to and there are some odd decisions,” said Benedict, “but the functional changes are really good.”
Benedict Evans was quoted in an article rounding up analyst reactions to the announcement of Apple's iOS 7. "I think they maintained the status quo", he commented. In his view it has "not really changed anything fundamental."
Benedict Evans was quoted in John Gapper's column, a discussion of Google. “It’s easy for consumers to switch to another search engine, but it is difficult to make anything as good,” he said.
“Google is a massive machine learning project, and it’s been feeding the machine for a decade.”
In this presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain). The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on reques
UK residential communications revenue growth was very strong in Q1 2013, rising to 4.6% from 2.1% in the previous quarter with most of the improvement driven by improved unit ARPU growth, which turned positive for the first time since early 2011
We expect unit volume growth to remain strong for the rest of the year, although ARPU growth is likely to moderate as overlapping price increases drop out, but it is still likely to be firmer than 2012 given the continued growth of high speed broadband (at least at BT and Virgin Media) and firm pricing in general
The outlook for market shares is less certain, with a number of difficult-to-predict factors coming into play, and while we do not expect dramatic changes in market share to result from any of these factors, they do create a risk of pushing operators to adopt more aggressive pricing strategies, which would disrupt an otherwise very healthy outlook
Benedict Evans was quoted in an article discussing the narrowing gap in app downloads between Android and iOS devices. That narrowing is largely attributable to the greater number of Android devices in use; the gap between the two operating systems in apps downloaded per user is as great as ever, with iOS leading.
"When Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, they were five years ahead of anyone else,” said Benedict. “We’ve now reached the point where there is a viable competing product that has more or less matched Apple.”
“There are big holes in Google Now and in Siri, but they are both trying to get beyond typing a search or clicking on an app, to become a more intelligent version of how your phone might help you.”
Overall UK mobile revenue growth slipped slightly in Q1, dropping 0.4ppts to -4.3%, although, taking into account the leap year effect, underlying growth likely improved a touch, marking the second quarter of growth being at least stable
EE announced 4G subscriber figures for the first time, reporting 318k subscribers at the end of the quarter, a very respectable figure given coverage, handset and price tier limitations. We expect this figure to grow strongly as coverage rolls out and 4G handset availability spreads, but the 4G revenue premium is still unlikely to be significant in 2013
The outlook for revenue growth in the rest of 2013 is fairly positive – the MTR impact will partly drop out from Q2 onwards, boosting reported revenue by over 2ppts, some mid-contract price increases will take effect, and pricing (so far) has remained reasonably stable