Apple has at least revolutionised two aspects of the mobile business: getting customers to queue overnight for a handset, and selling ‘contracts-in-a-box’, neither of which are likely to catch on in Europe
French altnet Neuf Cegetel is buying Club Internet from Deutsche Telekom for an estimated €500 million and will overtake its rival Free as the #2 on the DSL market, still way behind Orange
The new consumer data tariffs from Vodafone and Orange in the UK continue the trend towards dramatically lower data prices for high end users, although they are cunningly structured to involve more moderate increases for low end users
Virgin Media’s Q1 top line results were again mixed, with a growing number of customers leaving as competition intensifies, despite the rebrand to Virgin. But it could have been worse; most higher-spending customers are remaining
iPod revenue (quarterly, year-on-year) declined for the first time. Even though unit sales were up 24% year-on-year, the average iPod price was down 20%. Apple group revenue growth is increasingly dependent on Mac sales and new product launches, like Apple TV (March 2007) and the iPhone (in June 2007)
The spat between Virgin and Sky over cable carriage of Sky basic channels has generated much blogging, mostly supportive of Virgin, although neither party appears to be gaining from the ‘zero sum game’ dispute
Virgin Media’s Q4 results were again mixed – increasing competition is continuing to have a significant effect on net additions but, as yet, most higher ARPU customers are staying put, permitting modest revenue growth
Vodafone and Orange are planning to share their 3G networks in the UK, and are looking at potentially sharing their 2G networks in due course
Hostilities between Sky and Virgin have intensified during the course of cable’s re-launch, Sky’s announcement of its pay-DTT plans, and bilateral negotiations over channel carriage fee payments on the satellite and cable platforms
iPod volumes hit a record 21.1 million units sold in the key Christmas quarter, but year-over-year quarterly revenue growth declined again to 18% (from 29%) due to lower prices for all iPods and consumers’ drift to low priced flash memory based players (iPod Shuffle). Apple’s push on the iPhone limits the iPod’s future development and hence this segment’s future revenue growth