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The issues surrounding ITV Digital are complex and unclear. This report tries to unpick the tangled threads. It looks at the main financial issues and the manoeuvres with the BBC, the Office of Fair Trading and the set-top box manufacturers.

In this short note Chris Goodall looks at consumer payment technologies. He says that the banks and credit card companies are under no immediate threat from new technologies. Do not be confused by the wizard new technologies coming out of Nokia; technical advances are not going to change payment systems much in the next five years. Rather, he suggests, observers should focus on three interesting companies which use low technology solutions to solve particular payments problems. These companies support, rather than undermine, existing players in the consumer payments industry.

Microsoft XP has wider significance than most analysts appreciate. While the operating system is, in itself, not a huge advance on existing products - particularly Windows 2000 - its true significance lies in its value as a Trojan Horse for Microsoft .NET. As we indicated in the spring of this year, we think .NET moves Microsoft into direct competition with businesses as diverse as ISPs, mobile network operators and home electronics companies. Widespread adoption of XP makes the eventual success of .NET more secure

Nokia's recent guidance suggested a modest recovery in handset sales in 2002, followed by a strong resurgence thereafter. We think the position will be different and look for unit sales of about 450m next year, with only 3-7% growth in the years 2003-2005.

In this short note, we look at trends in mobile design and features. We show that the steady decline in size and weight is now over, and manufacturers are focusing on adding new functions, such as digital cameras, and even, in one case, a thermometer.

In this issue, Toby looks at recent evidence on UK multichannel viewing, particularly in the period immediately prior to the start of the new BARB audience panel.

Mobile operators’ marketing strategies are the primary determinant of the size of the market for handsets. The level of handset subsidy dramatically affects retailer sales. In this brief note, we look at the changes in retail subsidies in the UK during the past 6 months. We show how the emphasis on the acquisition of contract customers has meant higher levels of subsidy for the phones taken by these customers. By contrast, pre-pay subsidies have fallen.

This report provides an update on the major trends in the UK digital TV market. We use a variety of consumer market research data, which all offer a consistent picture of trends in the business.

Sky is doing well. But the evidence of the last quarter’s results suggests that it is not out of the wood yet.

This report contains our analysis of the French TV market. France, like the UK, is a difficult market for pay-TV and, recently, for some analogue terrestrial channels as well. We look at the analogies and differences between the two countries. In both places, excess competition and declining advertising revenues are beginning to create cracks in the noble edifices of the major TV groups. As in the UK, we conclude that analogue commercial TV may be less affected by digitalisation and pay-TV than most analysts expect.

We conclude that the economics of both free and premium digital terrestrial television are so unattractive that no rational bidder would enter the race for the licence. Likely advertising revenue on free channels will barely cover the transmission costs, while pay services will be crippled by astronomical subscriber management costs and low, or negative, margins on channels provided by BSkyB.

In this note we summarise the available evidence on trends in ARPU among European mobile operators. We demonstrate the increasing trend towards stable or increasing revenue per subscriber in key markets. The end to the long downward trend in voice ARPU is clearly in sight. This new stability is derived from increasingly firm call charges and slow growth in minutes of use. Local competitive conditions may disrupt this pattern in individual countries – and we demonstrate the countervailing trend in Finland – but, overall, the pattern is clear and will probably become more so in the next few months.

More important, perhaps, the current economics look acceptable both for BT's Wholesale and Openworld divisions - this note includes some detailed financial analysis. But even at the lower price levels, we remain unconvinced whether subscriber numbers will grow as rapidly as BT predicts. (BT is now saying that ADSL subscribers will be more numerous in 2005 than unmetered customers are today!)