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By contrast, NTTDoCoMo is putting its money firmly behind mobile data. Its investment plans in Japan provide capacity for huge amounts of data transmission. Three years from now, NTTDoCoMo will have invested, it says, 1 trillion yen (10bn Euros, if our maths is correct) in obtaining 6 million 3G customers. This investment, it says, will be enough to handle over 15m subscribers and provide coverage of 97% of the population. The major services it mentions as needing 3G bandwidth are music downloads and 'image clipping'.

This note considers the so-called 'digital dividend' in light of the recent ITV licence renewals.

The UK online population reached 17 million in February 2001, up around one-quarter on the year, on the strength of rising participation of women (to 44% of users) and of young people. We expect 4 million users to be added to the online population by February 2002, to reach 21 million, with growth at a lower rate than in 2000.

This report updates our July 2000 report on European B2C e-commerce, with a special focus on the UK market.

We estimate that global net adds were 48m in Q2, down from 58m in Q1 2001. The total net adds so far this year of 106m is 53% of our full year forecast of 201m for these territories, which supports our forecast of 375 million units shipped given that net adds will likely continue to decline in Q3 followed by the seasonally strong Q4.

The UK online market is among the most mature in Europe: while strong growth continued during 2000 (60% increase in home users), this was less dramatic than in Germany and France.

Our view is that mobile operator marketing strategy was the key determinant of the rate of apparent growth in mobile penetration across Europe in 2000. We use this report to show that operator 'push' was responsible for the increase in apparent subscribers. We examine the evidence on actual rates of ownership and usage in the three of the largest markets and show that underlying mobile penetration is probably around 60% of adults in these markets. Will the reduction in estimated levels of penetration, which the operators also acknowledge, mean continuing high growth rates in future? We think it unlikely. First of all, of course, operator 'push' is reducing. Second, ownership in key demographics, such as 15-24 year olds is already close to saturation. Third, those that do not own a mobile, particularly in the older age groups, appear relatively uninterested in the product.

Our pessimism derives from our view, firstly, that subscriber growth in NTL's UK cable franchises has all but ceased and, secondly, that further price rises will inevitably cause loss of subscribers as NTL's telephony and television offerings have already become uncompetitive. Broadband is important but will not generate significant amounts of extra revenue.

In this report Chris Goodall carries out a brief analysis of Sky's results published today and compares them to our projections.

Our emphasis in this note is on ITV Digital. What are the options open to the two shareholders of ITV Digital, Carlton and Granada? How can they reduce the burden of supporting ITV Digital through the next few years? What is the likelihood (or otherwise) of substantial improvement in that company’s results, in particular break even in 2003?

At the current CSFB tech conference in Barcelona Ericsson stated that the expected handset market for 2001 will now be at lower end of its previously stated range of 430-480m; both it & Nokia said the reason was cuts to handset subsidies in Europe. Whilst we are relieved that our early emphasis on the impact of changes in operator strategies on the handset market in Europe has been proved right, we are in the process of revising upwards our own forecast of 300-350 million units based on growth in China (this forecast and spreadsheet will shortly be available).

For the future, we expect data traffic to slow given strong signs of a plateau in demand among businesses and changing residential payment models. However, we forecast a gradual evolution towards profitable ISP business models based on unsubsidised pricing for all forms of access. Indeed, we expect overall pure Internet access revenues to continue to grow until the latter part of the decade. This is plainly contrary to all those who predicted access would be free for all and a loss-leader for other forms of revenue, such as online advertising, e-commerce commissions and eCRM (direct marketing).

Mobile Phone Users