Vodafone’s European revenue growth has dropped again in the latest quarter, both relative to the prior quarter and its competitors, with Spain performing particularly poorly
Overall growth in revenue and EBITDA remained adequate, in spite of a poor quarter at BT Wholesale
Google has announced that, alongside other industry partners, it is to create ‘Android’, a new operating system for mobile phones which is designed to facilitate the design and use of 3rd party applications, and which is planned to be in handsets from H2 2008
Telecoms subscriber growth has improved sharply but this has been achieved at the expense of ARPU growth; revenue continues to decline
Apparent weaknesses in its Q3 2007 results notwithstanding, Premiere has a good chance of meeting its FY 2007 guidance targets of €1 billion in revenues and €80-100 million in EBITDA after recovering marketing rights to live televised domestic football
Uncertainties over football rights from September 2009 remain and doubts persist about long-term growth in a market where 95% of homes receive 30+ free-to-air (FTA) domestic TV channels. Even with News Corporation’s extra know-how, climbing from 3.53 million (end of Q3 2007) to 4 million direct subscribers will take some push, while 5 million looks a distant dream
The pay-TV business is performing well, helped by the ‘halo’ effect from broadband; we view the unexpectedly sharp drop in operating profit as a temporary result of record quarterly take-up of Sky+
H3G has launched the ‘Skypephone’, a Skype-branded phone with a free Skype VoIP service fully integrated into the handset
School’s back and strong computer sales drove Apple’s Q4 FY2007 revenue to $6.22 billion, up 28.5% year-on-year
ITV plc set itself the annual target of 3-5% revenue growth up to 2010, then 5% to 2012, in its strategy presentation on September 12th 2007. Within the overall business growth target, ITV set itself a further three sub-targets. Two of these, the doubling of production revenues (currently in the region of £600 million per annum) by 2012 and the fivefold increase in online revenues from about £30 million in 2007 to £150 million in 2010 raised a good few eyebrows to judge by reactions afterwards; but the third target of 38.5% adult SOCI (share of commercial impacts, or ‘eyeballs delivered to advertisers’) by 2012 has drawn almost no attention
Aggregate mobile service revenue growth in the June quarter was 2.7%, down almost 1%, although this is mostly explicable by regulated price cuts
For the radio industry, the transition from an analogue broadcast system to a digital one is not going particularly smoothly. Data from the latest RAJAR audience survey, the first to track platform usage, showed that listening to digital radio stations remains stubbornly low. While the television industry has an agreed roadmap that includes a firm date for complete analogue switch-off, the radio industry has yet to determine such a date and appears mired in Ofcom consultations over the future shape of the commercial radio sector. This report examines the progress made so far towards ‘digital’ in the radio sector, and it explores the issues that require solutions if the industry’s migration is to prove successful