The UK broadband market remained strong in Q1 2015, backed up by healthy volumes, with a modest weakness in ARPU causing revenue growth to slow to 4.5% from 5.7% in the previous quarter. ARPU growth was particularly weak at BT and Virgin Media, with part of this due to one-off factors, but part due to the dilutive effect of increased promotional activity

Broadband volumes continued to modestly accelerate, pay TV volumes modestly decelerated and line rental growth levelled off. The highlight was high speed broadband, with market net adds continuing to rise, driven by increased marketing and BT’s roll-out reaching more rural areas where the speed improvement is more marked

Since the end of the quarter, Vodafone launched a new consumer dual play product. Launch pricing is at the bottom end of the current price curve, but not well below it, suggesting that it is wisely imitating EE’s approach of cross-selling a profitable product as opposed to deep discounting on broadband to build mobile market share

Apple has confirmed the launch of Apple Music, its streaming music service, available on iOS devices by the end of June, and later on Android. Priced at the same level as Spotify’s premium tier and lacking a free ad-supported offer, much hinges on the appeal of its curation tools.

Other key announcements included a news app, the roll-out of Apple Pay to the UK, improvements to maps, and new operating systems for Mac, iPhone/iPad and Watch.

The main theme was one of increasing intelligence in services, with Music and News both being curated and the software getting better at understanding and predicting user needs. This is a necessary step to prepare for the next wave of consumer technology: wearables and connected devices.

The latest numbers for Q1 2015 show strong device and internet user growth, with more of the population online than ever before, including more than 90% of under-55s. Growth amongst older groups, however, has slowed to a crawl

Participation in online activities is up across the board, but digital media data shows spend on ebooks and digital music struggling, with the latter being heavily impacted by the rise of unlimited streaming models such as Spotify

The story of mobile's surge continues, with almost a half of e-commerce transactions and a third of search and display ad spend now going to mobile. Most of these mobile devices are Android, but iPhone seems to have gained long term share with its larger phones. Google services, however, have cross-platform reach

Virgin Media’s subscriber trends were a little weak in Q1 compared to previous trends, with intense promotional activity from competitors hurting, but it still expanded its base

ARPU was also relatively weak due to various VAT and pricing changes, but it still grew, leading to cable revenue growth of 3% versus 4% in the previous quarter, and OCF growth of 5% versus 9% in the previous quarter

This growth level is likely to accelerate over the year as subscriber momentum improves and one-off effects annualise out, with the benefits of footprint extension mainly impacting from 2016

The US music publishing market, worth $2.2 billion in 2013, is poised for moderate CAGR of 2.5% in the period 2014-17, thanks to performance royalty growth from broadcast and new media uses, offsetting flat mechanicals as the physical-to-digital transition in recorded music continues to place pressure on this revenue line

ASCAP and BMI, the performance rights organisations, have been engaged in an intense period of litigation against Pandora, the popular ad-supported streaming service with around 80 million users, in which Pandora has prevailed

ASCAP and BMI have also sought to loosen the consent decree regime in place since 1941 and overseen by the Department of Justice in order to enable "market-driven" rates, but this effort also looks set to fail in light of the firm opposition of all classes of licensees

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 17 March 2015. The event featured talks from 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides the accompanying slides for some of the presentations.

Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 17 March 2015. The event featured talks from 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides edited transcripts from some of the talks, and you will find accompanying slides for many of the presentations here.

Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

Sky plc has produced a strong first quarter across its three markets in terms of subscriber growth, record low churn and continuing firm control over costs, which has contributed to a 5% increase in revenues and 20% increase in operating profit over the first nine months of fiscal 2015

As expected, practically all the retail customer growth in Q3 occurred in the UK & Ireland and in Germany & Austria. Nevertheless, the results were also positive in Italy, as it registered the highest net customer increase in 3 years and record low churn

It is still too early to judge the success of the Sky plc strategy in terms of synergies, innovation and content origination. Whilst the potential appears great, the imminence of the next Bundesliga auction is a reminder that the issue of sports rights inflation is unlikely to disappear even after the latest PL auction

YouTube remains the dominant online video site globally, although competition for the viewer is growing from OTT video and other popular apps. Reach and consumption appear to be slowing in the US and the UK, but YouTube reports strong growth in global watch time as smartphone adoption proceeds

The number and variety of Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs) on YouTube continues to grow. Music video MCN Vevo has so far been the largest single presence on YouTube, but it is being overtaken by the combined Disney/Maker Studios MCN 

In contrast to the aggregator MCNs with tens of thousands of channels, studio MCNs have much smaller network sizes and a higher share of owned channels. Their focus on content curation and creation has allowed some to build global audiences of repeat viewers, a unique strength and of significant appeal for advertisers

Although Sky’s bids might be seen as putting its majority ownership of PL rights beyond reach at the next auction in 2018, the contest between Sky and BT is by no means over, raising the question of further inflation of premium sports content as other rights come up for renewal

Sport may have lost much of the importance it once had in generating profits from pay-TV platforms; however, the record bids by Sky leave no doubt as to the continuing importance of premium sports, and especially PL football, in terms of building and retaining overall scale

Through placing less inflated bids than Sky and not winning any extra packages, BT has put itself in a more flexible position with regard to future strategic options, which includes (VULA permitting) competing for televised rights to other premium sports besides football