In this presentation we highlight Mediaset's star position among European FTA broadcasters, enjoying the highest share of its national advertising market (and profit margin), stable throughout digitalisation and secure for the future

Mediaset Premium, the pay-as-you-go and subscription DTT service, grew customers rapidly up to 2010, leveraging both DTT expansion and the appetite for low cost football and film programming. This hampered subscriber recruitment at satellite pay-TV operator Sky Italia, which relaunched its sales in 2010 on heavy programming in programming, set-top boxes and marketing

Sky Italia's subscriber base may be just above that of Mediaset Premium, but Sky's ARPU is 8x that of Mediaset premium, underlining the greater efficiency of the monthly subscription bundle in relation to PAYG pay-TV. Sky Italia is profitable while Mediaset Premium might just reach breakeven in 2010

Google has launched a dedicated ebooks store in the US, with support from 4,000 publishers, providing an ecommerce platform for independent book retailers

Google’s aim is not revenue from ebooks, though the market is attractive: we estimate ebooks will be 5% of the US books market in 2010 ($1bn) and could grow to perhaps half of all book sales within the next five years

Like Amazon and Apple, Google is using ebooks to support its broader strategy, driving search traffic and building an ecommerce platform. Revenue from ebooks is less important than supporting these objectives

The digital transition is almost complete in France, five years after the launch of DTT. After undergoing an audience share decline, TF1's share is stabilising. In contrast, M6 improved its audience share during the transition. Both groups are likely to remain dominant in the FTA TV market, thanks to the partial withdrawal of public TV from advertising sales

The advertising recovery in 2010 was strong. Thanks to its diversification, M6 is less exposed to the cycle than TF1, which is rebounding more strongly. M6 is also structurally more profitable

Pay-TV platform growth has stalled, with subscription decline at Canal+ somewhat balanced by growth of low cost packages of IPTV providers. Canal+ will benefit from the withdrawal of Orange from premium TV and a new distribution deal with Orange. Combined with the roll out of new set-tops with PVRs, we are moderately optimistic on Canal+ prospects

In this short presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to September 2010, based on the published results of the major service providers and Ofcom telephony data. We include our own estimates where reported data is incomplete. This quarter’s edition includes a revision to some historical trends resulting from our own interpretation of BT’s recent adjustment to the volume of unbundled lines.

Highlights in the quarter included exceptionally strong growth in broadband net additions at Sky and the resumption of the long term rate of decline in broadband market growth by volume.

European mobile revenue growth improved by 0.8ppts in Q3 to reach -0.3%, but all of this improvement and more was due to easing regulatory pressures, with underlying growth actually declining marginally

GDP growth continues to improve year-on-year, but in the current low confidence environment underlying mobile revenue growth is not (yet) responding. Smartphone sales are surging, but their net impact on revenue is hard to discern

Looking forward, the regulatory impact is likely to turn negative again for the next few quarters, so some underlying growth catch-up is required for revenue growth to stay at around zero

TalkTalk Group (TTG) revenue growth for the six months to September was flat on a like-for-like basis; broadband net additions were affected by heavy churn among former Tiscali customers as the migration process got under way

Guidance for broadband net adds to March has been reduced by two thirds, but the prospect of improved efficiency from migrations and strong ARPU growth has enabled financial guidance for the full year to be maintained

Management has laid out ambitious plans to improve performance further by cutting costs. The plans look feasible, but controlling churn will be a long haul

Vivendi is close to being in a cash position to buy out minority shareholdings in SFR and Canal+, shedding the image of a ‘conglomerate’ of partly owned and diverse assets, which has weighed on valuation Acquiring Vodafone’s 44% stake in SFR (now only a question of price) would allow Vivendi to rebrand itself as a telecoms story, serving France, with Maroc Télécom and mainly Brazil’s GVT supplying the upside To fully acquire Canal+, Vivendi’s offer will need to consider Lagardère’s option of floating its 20% stake. Owning 100% of Canal+ and SFR opens the narrative of a ‘French media/telecoms champion’ – which we find less credible

This report on Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland, News Corporation’s Continental Europe pay-TV assets, complements our coverage of BSkyB in the UK. We look at the market environment, including regulation and competition. The report also provides subscriber, revenue and earnings forecasts and SWOT analysis.

VMed’s Q3 results showed continuing strength in the face of heavy marketing by BT Retail and BSkyB, although cable churn increased significantly

There are plenty of further challenges on the horizon, including a downturn in consumer confidence and later, the launch of YouView and wider deployment by BT of next generation access

The broad based nature of the company’s growth and its plans for further product development in TV and broadband continue to give us confidence in the potential for further growth in cash flow, albeit at a more modest pace

Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system is launching with a big bang: ten handsets, eighteen operators, and a massive marketing campaign

The OS itself is positioned firmly in between iPhone and Android in terms of ease-of-use and customisability; it is as fast as the best-in-class but no faster; and its interface is bold but will not be to everybody’s taste

A lack of apps, limited distribution, and expensive handsets will likely limit sales in the short term. Longer term, being late in the game with no truly compelling unique feature will make building a major position very challenging, but not impossible