Homepage

With the Daily, Rupert Murdoch has launched an iPad-only mass market ‘newspaper’ with a fifth of the journalists and just 15% of the revenue per reader of a conventional popular newspaper. Whether it succeeds or not, this sort of radicalism may be essential if the spirit of newspapers is to survive

The Daily is using every tool Apple and the social web can give it to drive adoption, but for all the video and twitter feeds it remains at heart a print product on a tablet. The first truly native iPad news voice has yet to come

The Daily and its peers are discovering that a platform owner such as Apple has power the print unions never dreamed of, with the payment models they want conflicting with bigger strategic objectives at technology companies ten times their size

TalkTalk Group (TTG) lost broadband customers for the first time in its history in the quarter to December due to dissatisfaction among former Tiscali customers, and to a lesser extent, at AOL UK

But gross additions appeared to remain healthy and ARPU growth was strong, holding group revenue flat

The group remains on track to make guidance for the financial year to March. Beyond that, we remain optimistic about the prospects for further cost reduction, but reducing churn remains a daunting prospect

BT Global Services is generating cash ahead of schedule and the company’s strategy for defending the core business is gaining traction

Group performance continues to be affected by increased capital expenditure due to investment in next generation access

The company is on track to meet guidance, although prospects for further upside remain limited

Vodafone Europe’s revenue growth was broadly flat in the December quarter at 0.2%, but MTR cuts in Germany meant that underlying growth improved by 0.4ppts

Given flat economic growth in its key markets and the cold weather effect, this is a very respectable result, albeit not in line the company’s confident guidance given three months ago

With more severe MTR cuts scheduled over the coming quarters, and GDP growth forecast to not improve, revenue growth is more likely to decline than rise over the coming year

The year ended on a strong note, as Sky broke passed its milestone of ten million homes and achieved yet another record breaking quarter for multi-product take-up

Home communications once more achieved exceptional growth, with triple play penetration jumping from 18% to 24%, while HD take-up resumed strong momentum after halving in Q1 2011

Financially, the company has never looked in better shape, with good prospects for continuing strong multi-product growth, leaving the question of where Sky will choose to invest next to drive further revenue growth

Jeremy Hunt announced on 25 January his intention to refer News Corp’s bid for BSkyB to the Competition Commission

However, he is first providing News Corp with the opportunity to address Ofcom’s concerns, and in so doing protecting his department and Ofcom from any legal threats

If Ofcom or the OFT say the News Corp remedies don’t go far enough, Jeremy Hunt will be then almost obliged to refer the transaction to the CC

Google’s UK gross revenue rose 18% YoY in Q4 to £550 million (excluding estimated hedging gains), with bad weather and the impending VAT rise helping to deliver better than expected performance

The company’s core search business continues to be a key driver and beneficiary of the growth in consumer e-commerce, which we project will increase by 20% in 2011, compared to 4-5% for retail sales (excluding fuels)

We have raised our 2011 growth forecast for Google’s UK business to 15% – with search supported by growth in mobile and display – we now project UK internet advertising spend will increase 11% this year

French ISPs are about to enter a disruptive four month window of penalty-free broadband subscriber churn, triggered by the VAT rise on IPTV

SFR has followed Iliad’s Free by offering unmetered fixed-to-mobile calls at the risk of ARPU decline

We expect Free’s market share to stabilise, whilst those of SFR and Bouygues should rise to the detriment of Orange