BT’s acquisition of Premiership Rugby rights underlines its intentions to create a solid premium sports channel with expected launch in summer 2013
BT’s entry into the sports arena is part of a wider TV platform/content strategy that embraces the launch of a much enlarged basic channel offer, integration with YouView and fibre roll-out
Although expected to post significant losses on its sports channels over the next three years, BT’s commitment appears long term
Apple has refreshed the iPhone with a thinner design, better performance and the addition of 4G LTE, returning it (arguably) to the status of the best phone on the market for 6-9 months, until competitors catch up again.
Apple’s choice of LTE bands gives Everything Everywhere a 12 month exclusive selling ‘4G speeds for your iPhone’ in the UK, although given that the iPhone 5 also supports the latest enhancements to 3G, the impact of this will depend much on how well it is marketed.
The iPhone retains a super premium price, with an ASP of $624 in Q2. Even the discounted 2 year old iPhone 4 is $450 before subsidy, while much Android growth is under $150. Apple is locking in the top 25% of the smartphone market and leaving the rest to Android, for now.
In this presentation we show our analysis of the UK mobile market performance to Q2 2012 and consider the outlook both in terms of market growth and competitive dynamics
Amazon, Nokia and Apple are expected to announce new mobile devices in the next fortnight. We outline the main products and features expected and their implications
A US jury has found Samsung infringed Apple’s patents with Android products and awarded $1bn damages. This is 17% of Samsung’s Q2 operating profit and would be crippling to any other Android OEM: it sends ripples of uncertainty through the ecosystem.
We expect the verdict to accelerate IP licensing between Apple and other Android OEMs, with Apple (like Nokia and other IP holders) levying a fee per device, though Google’s ownership of Motorola may mitigate this somewhat.
However, major changes in the Android proposition are unlikely to be necessary, and as long as the iPhone ASP is $650 and Android is $300 or below, market share is unlikely to shift much. Absent a cheaper iPhone, Android will continue to outsell iPhone 3:1 at much lower prices, especially outside the USA.
Around 125m smartphones were sold globally in Q2, up over 30% from Q2 2011. Around 450m mobile handsets were sold in the quarter, giving smartphones a volume share of around 28% Apple and Android dominate with a combined of 85% of units sold, and a cumulative total of 810m devices running their mobile platforms. Of these we estimate that 680m are active, of which 95m are tablets Android arrived later and has grown faster, but Apple’s market share of smartphones as been steady at 20-25% for several years: Android’s growth has come at the expense of Nokia, RIM and feature phones
In this presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain). The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request.
In this report we show our analysis of the performance, key trends, competitive dynamics and factors impacting the UK broadband, telephony and pay-TV markets
The first part of the report focusses on market level performance and KPIs such as volume and revenue growth, net adds, pricing and ARPU, and market shares as well as our analysis of key developments in high speed broadband and pay-TV offerings
The second covers the individual results of the four largest ISPs (BT, Virgin Media, BSkyB and TalkTalk Group) in the context of the wider market developments
Though likely to be appealed, the CAT’s dismissal of the Ofcom WMO remedy seems certain to cut off any further re-regulation of pay-TV in the next two years
The CAT decision hands Sky pricing power in the wholesale of its premium sports content, while forcing other retailers to switch their focus on to attempts to enter into commercial supply agreements with Sky
Financially Sky has potentially most to gain and VMed most to lose from the CAT decision, while BT’s strategy to expand its content offer is highly challenged
Sky generated 14% growth in operating profits in FY 2012 in spite of a comparative 53 week reporting year in 2012, the price freeze induced by a tough economic climate and large incremental investment in programming
The increase was much as we expected with predictable strong growth in home communications, wash-through of TV and HD subscriptions, low churn and most notably improved operating efficiencies
The medium term outlook for operating profit growth in the existing business remains very promising, with further potential upside following the launch of NOW TV and the acquisition of Parthenon