News Corp will split publishing out of its business by creating a company to include newspapers in the US, UK and Australia as well as book publisher HarperCollins News Corp revenue growth has for some time been driven by explosive growth in cable network programming revenues, with slower revenue growth in film, TV, satellite TV and publishing The structural decline of print-based businesses is the main reason cited for the split. However, the Dow Jones and WSJ, both serving a B2B market, will be at the heart of the new publishing company’s value

In this report we show the findings of our 2012 UK mobile user survey. The report is a wide ranging analysis of the mobile market based on our consumer research, focusing on the competitive landscape among the mobile operators and smartphone manufacturers, and the changing consumer behaviour that has and will continue to impact the market

Recent news flow and feedback from media buyers indicates that growth in UK internet advertising is slowing due to the ongoing weakness in the economy

Paid search, buttressed by its link to e-commerce and measurable ROI, is suffering less than internet display, with growth in spend on social media slowing and price deflation especially for non-premium inventory

Online classifieds are also being hit by the economic woe, resulting in some sectors growing more slowly and non-advertising communications taking a larger share of spend; the secular shift to the internet continues

Apple has announced the features of the next version of iOS, the platform that runs the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Key steps includes the replacement of Google Maps with Apple’s own mapping service, Facebook integration and expanded features for the Chinese market.

By replacing Google Maps, and in numerous smaller ways, Apple is starting to direct its users away from Google: a key theme across many new features is moving search and discovery away from raw web search.

Apple also announced a solid refresh of its laptop line (though the Mac business is now only 13% of revenues) and did not announce a new television product, despite frantic rumours that it would.

In this report we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to March 2012, based on the published results of the major service providers.

Highlights for the March quarter include broadband subscriptions exceeding 21 million, a sudden uptick in broadband market net additions and local loop unbundling accounting for a record 40% of broadband subscriptions. The proportion of unbundled lines that are fully unbundled exceeded two thirds for the first time.

This quarter we also include a look at pricing, including prices for high speed broadband that show how BT Retail is using high speed broadband to reduce the price advantage of its competitors.

The Apple rumour mill turns to television, with widespread speculation that Apple will shortly announce… something, that will offer a different approach to the TV experience.

 However, if Apple distributes TV content in new ways, it will need to work with existing channels and often pay providers, who are unlikely to enable fundamental disruption to their business models.

 We see plenty of scope for Apple to make a great TV product – which need not necessarily be an actual television. But we see far less scope for it to break apart the value chain of TV content – and Apple doesn’t need to

Strong cost reduction and mix effects enabled TalkTalk to report a third successive year of high cash flow growth, in spite of declining revenue due to high churn The company appears to have retained its strong position at the value end of the market, and this should result in continuing sales combining with falling churn to generate positive revenue growth Although high speed broadband and a YouView-based TV offer will dilute profitability to an extent, this should be outweighed by other factors, generating further significant cash flow growth

In the last few quarters the iPhone has grown to 50% of total smartphone unit sales in the USA, while smartphones overall are now around 42% of the installed base

In the last 12 months we estimate US mobile operators spent around $15bn subsidising iPhones, slightly under 9% of their revenue

The key factor driving increased US iPhone share is increased distribution: it was over two thirds of AT&T’s reported smartphone sales for each of the last 8 quarters, but AT&T only had a third of the market; when Apple added Verizon Wireless in Q1 2011 and Sprint in Q4, it immediately took over half of their smartphone sales as well, powering it to 50% of total US smartphone sales in Q1 2012

Sky Deutschland has renewed its broadcast rights contract with the Bundesliga until 2017, removing the most important source of uncertainty for investors and consumers, albeit at the cost of a 77% jump in the fee from 2013/14

Combined with Sky’s new exclusive channels, high definition offer and on-demand services, the contract will sustain subscriber growth, but ARPU will only rise slowly

Although we forecast Sky to meet its EBITDA breakeven target in 2013, cash flow should stay negative until 2015 due to rising spend on receivers

UK mobile advertising jumped 157% year-on-year to £203 million in 2011, marginally higher than our forecast of £180 million, with strong growth in both search and display

Mobile advertising now accounts for 6% of internet search and display spend, but still lags mobile devices’ share of internet consumption, which has been rising strongly due to rapid smartphone and tablet adoption, and we estimate is now at around 15%

We expect much of the lag between mobile’s share of internet consumption and ad spend to disappear over the next five years, indicating continued high growth