Enders Analysis provides a subscription research service covering the media, entertainment, mobile and fixed telecommunications industries in Europe, with a special focus on new technologies and media.
Our research is independent and evidence-based, covering all sides of the market: consumers, leading companies, industry trends, forecasts and public policy & regulation. A complete list of our research can be found here.
This report updates our readers on the disappointing advance of online console gaming in the UK. Although the UK is the third largest video games market in the world, and was the first country in Europe to offer online gaming for Xbox and PS2, we estimate only 90,000 UK online console gamers at the end of Q1 2004 (just over 1% of 128-bit consoles sold to date).
Modest progress has been made towards consolidation in commercial radio since we last reported on the issue in mid-2003. Although the new Communications Act has liberalised the ownership rules, the potential blocking role of the Competition Commission continues to be a restraining factor in the wake of the Galaxy/Vibe ruling. That ruling found that anti-competitive outcomes could emerge even if the ownership rules were respected and it has had a chilling effect on M&A activity.
In this report we update our regular survey of UK mobile users, with the latest survey conducted in April 2004. We look at user penetration, handset replacement rates, camera phone ownership and use, and also the market share prospects and camera phone usage for the mobile network operators.
Happy Birthday iTunes! It is just over a year since Apple launched iTunes and the media continues to talk up the second coming of the music industry, whose saviour appears in the form of affable Steve Jobs. iTunes sold a total of 70 million tracks online in its first year, well below its target of 100 million, but a respectable showing, especially since it spawned a small flock of competitors determined to out-sell iTunes.
Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) has been a failure in the UK, with BT maintaining a stranglehold on the wholesale supply of DSL connections. But in other European countries, LLU has helped provide competition to the incumbent PTT and acted as a catalyst for the development of new services, such as voice-over-broadband and TV-over-DSL, and generally brought prices down.
UK broadband take-up continued to be strong in H1 2004, with an estimated 1.1 million new home and business broadband subscribers expanding the base to 4.2 million. Take-up is being aided by aggressive price competition - many ISPs are now offering broadband packages below the critical price point of £20/month - and relentless marketing campaigns as the 'land grab' for subscribers continues.
The structure of the UK broadcasting industry will be hugely influenced by the timing of the analogue switch-off. It will particularly affect ITV, whose licence fee is set by reference to the percentage of the population able to receive digital signals.
The unveiling of new handheld gamers at E3, the games industry's annual gathering in Los Angeles, has resuscitated interest in the fast maturing market for handheld gamers. Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), Nintendo's dual-screen GameBoy and Nokia's redesigned N-Gage QD are major product plays for companies that must each prove themselves again to be innovative or continue to decline.
Although 3G mobile networks are being rolled out aggressively in Japan, instead of the promised land of increased voice and data revenue driving higher profits, revenue is stagnant and costs are rising. In this report we examine why and consider the lessons to be learned for European operators.