UK mobile service revenue growth marginally improved in Q1, to 0.5% from 0.3% in the previous quarter, with the market now having been stuck at a modest but positive growth level for two full years. The improvement was driven by contract ARPU growth improvements, across all of the operators, partially mitigated by a drop in contract subscriber volume growth, perhaps influenced by a weak market for new handsets

Looking forward, the competitive outlook is very uncertain; while EE is looking to increase its network lead, whether it wishes to use this to boost share or pricing is unclear, O2’s future owners may have different strategic priorities to the status quo, H3G will likely take innovative approaches, which are tautologically hard to predict, and Vodafone UK remains Vodafone’s only large European market without a scale position in consumer broadband, a situation it is likely to want to rectify in due course

While before the Brexit referendum, we would have concluded that the outlook for market-wide revenue growth was reasonably positive in spite of this, with ever-strong data volume growth contrasting with constrained spectrum supply, the extra economic uncertainty due to the referendum result puts this at least partly in doubt. The mobile market is likely to be relatively insensitive to macroeconomic conditions given its increasingly essential nature, but there is some sensitivity, particularly if population growth slows or reverses. Our base case assumption is a dip in growth of 1-2ppts in 2017 as a consequence of Brexit

Cinema, TV and VOD services share in the same ratings regime in the UK, giving parents confidence they can discern content unsuitable for their children.

Risks to children of being exposed to unsuitable content and advertising multiply on the 'open' internet. 

Parental controls supplied by ISPs are key to filtering content and sites, although a unified approach is better 

Our survey results highlighted disconnects between operator ambition and consumer perceptions across customer loyalty, network performance and quad play, with noteworthy implications for future competitive performance. O2 in particular benefited from strong branding which yielded network confidence and loyalty above that of top network investors, EE and Vodafone

Convergence prospects continue to look supplier driven with consumers reporting little interest in quad play packages even when offered with significant bundle discounts. Recent advertising campaigns have sought to change consumer perceptions of a dichotomy in mobile and fixed broadband provisioning which, if successful, will be to the benefit of all quad play hopefuls

The mobile usage disparities between 16-24 year olds and 55+ users are stark, for instance near 100% of mobile users aged 16-24 own a smartphone while for those 55+, this falls to just over half. The implications are strong for service providers in all manner of industries who are seeing new (younger) users come to market that bear little resemblance to the traditional users around whom much of the operational model is typically built

The decline in print display advertising in national newspapers accelerated to -16% in 2015, while growth in digital advertising is slowing, and will be unable to offset revenue decline for the foreseeable future.

We believe this decline is structural and irreversible, continuing at a sharper pace than before despite the recovery in the UK economy in 2013-2015, and very different from the cyclical decline of 2009.

Publishers must convince brands and agencies that in the mobile era their superior content environments have added value. If scale newsrooms are to survive, costs must be reduced through collaboration and outsourcing.

UK residential communications market revenue growth dipped down 2ppts to 4% in Q1 2016, due in roughly equal measure to slowing broadband growth, some one-off benefits in the previous quarter dropping out, and generally weak ARPU likely caused by promotional introductory price discounting

Virgin Media was the only major operator to buck the market trend and accelerate broadband growth, helped by its network extension Project Lightning, and this impact will grow throughout 2016, with the remaining operators squeezed between this and the slowing market

Growth in the rest of the year will be impacted by pricing decisions yet to be made, and slowing volumes could well drive market revenue growth below 4% during the year, but we do not expect it to drop very much below this

TalkTalk Q4 2015/16 results firmly indicated that operations had moved on from the cyber-attack; record low churn and strong mobile (+90k) and fibre (+72k) traction with stable gross adds were all in line with the revised strategy announced last quarter and marked the best net adds performance for the year

Wholesale subscriber net adds (+49k) were critical to on-net base stability against retail net losses (-49k), highlighting the short term value of wholesaling as a hedge against heightened (and expensive) retail competition although long term sustainability will rely on traction in retail

FY17 guidance targets EBITDA of £320-360m, with an implied 17-20% margin (+3-6ppts on FY16), which is accessible from MTTS projections, lost costs from revised trading plans, and lower CPAs before counting revenue growth contributions. The operating cost impact from blinkbox, York fibre and other new cost structures appears benign for the moment

Paid placements for content marketing online in Europe will increase by 186% from 2014-2020, to over €2 billion

It is a particularly exciting area for premium publishers, who can leverage their content expertise to reverse the flight of ad money to lower-cost properties. Almost all are developing creative content offerings to capture this value

Metrics and measurement, disclosure and cost remain as challenges for content marketing online, but growth is strong due to high commitment to spend from advertisers

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 8 March 2016. The event featured talks from 22 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.

This report provides edited transcripts of the talks, and you will find accompanying slides for some of the presentations here.

Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

European mobile service revenue growth was flat at -0.8%, while underlying country movements were somewhat more dramatic. The key highlights were Italy returning to positive growth driven by pricing stability, and France showing worsening growth decline for the first time in over two years impacted by challenger telco pricing cuts

An assessment of these challenger telcos highlights a somewhat precarious position, as continued price aggression yields diminishing incremental gains, and they all remain some way from gaining the scale to achieve profitability

The only incentive for challengers to remain aggressive is as an encouragement for their competitors to buy them; increasing regulatory hurdles to consolidation would remove even this incentive, leaving price increases as their only rational route to profitability

The UK residential communications market maintained strong growth of 6% in Q4, helped by overlapping price increases at BT and TalkTalk, albeit mitigated by weaker volume growth as a result of the TalkTalk cyber-attack

This strong growth level benefits from multiple factors, including continually growing broadband adoption, broadband ARPU being boosted by the shift to superfast, price increases across line rental, calls and premium pay TV, and additional pay TV adoption at the lower end

We expect a modest dip in market revenue growth moving into 2016 as various one-off boosts drop out, but the underlying drivers of growth are sufficiently diversified to give us confidence that further downside is limited