Collective losses among the so-called altnets hit £1.3bn in 2023, according to a survey of the companies’ most recently published accounts by research group Enders Analysis, which warns the picture will not improve this year. James Barford, director of telecoms, said “2024 might well be worse due to increasing interest costs”.

A report published by Enders Analysis in October said weaker than expected penetration was a critical driver for the collective losses.

"2024 was another year where Apple failed to break out a killer new product line," said Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders Analysis, a research firm. Failure to turn these futuristic platforms into generation-defining products could have long-lasting implications.

"Vision Pro is too expensive for what it can do," MacEwan said. "It's not yet at a high enough image quality to enable real work such as on spreadsheets, and it simply doesn't have that density of apps and experiences yet."

“Broadcaster decline is slowing down, that is clear,” says Tom Harrington, the head of television at the research service Enders. “It is not as bad as it was, but broadcasters’ video-on-demand services are not balancing the decline in linear TV. Streaming is not keeping up with the viewing decline, the amount leaving broadcasters is still more than material.”

“Outside of the top few the others are kind of bundled in a way that makes them almost like they are free,” says Harrington. “They are just not as valued by customers, usage levels are low, and they have no leverage to put prices up. Netflix is smart. They have now anchored the low cost end of the market with its ad-supported package. Others can’t put prices up without looking expensive, but they are all having to foot the same content costs without Netflix’s scale.”

As Jamie MacEwan, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, explained: “The benefits like badges, icons, early access and customisation options are more akin to features we see on social apps in China or Japan than the paid tiers being rolled out by Western social platforms.”

“Given that subscriptions doubled in the last year, they could actually be responsible for about half of incremental revenue last quarter — that’s a great story, but one that will get harder to sustain over time,” added MacEwan.

“If you want to challenge Sky, you must put a lot of money on the table,” says Francois Godard, senior media and telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis.

“For the money Amazon spent, they will have been very happy,” says Godard. “If the same thing had been available, I’m sure they would’ve been interested again, but that package was not there.

“They came into the Premier League with a retailer’s mentality, wanting people there on the platform right at the time they would shop most, and then moved towards a broadcasters’ mentality, where you need to people to come back to your service.

“For that, weekly sport is ideal. Amazon were so happy with the Champions League in Italy and Germany that they switched to the UK. I never saw this as a vote against the Premier League, but it is so expensive.”

“LinkedIn has put a lot of effort into encouraging more frequent and interesting posting in a more social environment in the last five years, and if enough inventory was available then this kind of automated tool could help to attract advertisers who are unfamiliar with the platform,” said Jamie MacEwan, senior analyst at Enders Analysis.

“It’s been a mess for years,” said Alice Enders, director of research at Enders Analysis, a media and entertainment consultancy, noting that for all the problems, the Telegraph remains a profitable business. “But without an owner, the management cannot implement a strategy. For the staff, whose salaries and promotions are frozen, it’s an ongoing challenge.”

“The only reason he is the preferred bidder is because he offered so much more money than anyone else,” said Enders, noting that the reserve price was £500 million.

Enders Analysis analyst François Godard told Reuters that bumpy trading in Canal+ was expected until the company's narrative was fully grasped by investors.

"It (Canal+) is both incumbent and digital, profitable but not the way streamers are profitable, it is growing but not next year, it is expanding in Africa, which investors don't really understand," he said.

In a research note last week, Enders Analysis said that Britain was relatively well served by existing mobile networks, while the large number of national boundaries in Europe means that stopping satellite signals at the border is a regulatory nightmare.

For these reasons, Hamish Low, of Enders, says he does not expect a full satellite-to-device service to be available in the UK until 2026 at the earliest. And even assuming those kinks are worked out, it may not be the easy win that mobile networks are hoping for.

However, Low says that companies such as Starlink or Apple, through its Globalstar investment, could use the business to chip away at the incumbent mobile businesses. Apple has spent years developing custom modem chips for its phones – currently one of the few parts of the supply chain it does not control – which would boost reception from satellites.