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
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Karen Egan at Enders Analysis said: “The downward financial spiral of Three UK and Vodafone to an extent is signalling that the market is overcrowded and cannot support four nationwide players at these revenue levels and with an expanding cost base.”
“It is a real scourge. Since Spotify has sought to open up to everyone, for and not only to the majors, it has been confronted with individuals who use bots to inflate the audience of songs that have nothing artistic about them”, underlines Alice Enders, from Enders Analysis. According to her, there are more and more 30-second clips on the platform, no doubt generated by AI. The share of streams from majors and independent labels has thus increased from 85% in 2018 to 75% in 2022.
In this remaining quarter, "there are certainly amateur musicians, who use bots to climb and get noticed by record companies, but also more and more scammers who seek to siphon off the income of genuine creators", she says.
Joseph Teasdale, tech industries expert at consultancy Enders Analysis, told i: “Nobody ever worked out a successful business model for free online journalism when Facebook changed its algorithm. It’s the end of an era for the web 2.0 generation.
“Everyone was looking for a wunderkid messiah. A digital Napoleon. People wanted to believe in a new Zuckerberg, somebody who just got the new world unlike the legacy media fuddy-duddies.”
“That is part of it but I still think we would still be in the same place today anyway,” says Joseph Teasdale, of analysts Enders. “The fact is BuzzFeed has been scrambling for a business model: the social web it was built for has gone away. It is the end of the road for a certain model of online journalism. For years companies like Vice and BuzzFeed were valued like tech companies; everyone was looking for something like the next Facebook, but they weren’t it.”
Prime Video is a vital, freestanding component of Amazon’s sticky and fast-growing Prime subscription bundle—but it is also the key cog in the company’s overall video marketplace strategy
With the Prime subscriber base and Fire TV operating system driving scale, Prime Video and the ad-supported Freevee guarantee traffic, foster competition and maintain quality—ensuring leverage to deal with suppliers
However, the entertainment platform market is fiercely competitive and video is different from socks: content can’t be commoditised, meaning that Amazon must allow third-party brand building
Karen Egan, telecoms expert at Enders Analysis, said the combination of Three and Vodafone could transform the fortunes of struggling operators, with Three UK on a ‘downward spiral’ as the country’s smallest player behind BT-owned EE, Virgin Media O2 and Vodafone.
Analysts at Enders suggest that the CMA is not demonstrating the ‘pro-business approach’ needed for the deal to go through. Vodafone shares fell 1.7 per cent, or 1.64p, to 94.52p.
Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis, said: “The combination has the potential to transform the fortunes of two struggling operators, with deal upside predicated on cost synergies rather than on rising prices, which we do not foresee."
An announcement about the mooted merger of Vodafone’s UK operations with Three appears imminent, paving the way for an ultimate CK Hutchison exit.
The combination has the potential to transform the fortunes of two struggling operators, with deal upside predicated on cost synergies rather than on rising prices (which we do not foresee).
It is all to play for in regulatory clearance terms, with Ofcom expected to take a neutral stance and a seemingly open mind from DSIT, but the CMA is not yet demonstrating the more pro-business approach that was hoped for with the new regime.
