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.

In the March 2011 quarter Apple’s revenue was up 83% year-on-year and net income up 95%. iPhone sales are up 113% and the iPad has sold 19.5m units in the last 12 months. Even the ‘legacy’ Mac business grew 32%, and Apple now has over $65bn cash in the bank. Not bad for a niche business

With single digit penetration in its core growth businesses, Apple has the opportunity to continue growing fast for some time to come

The threat from Google’s Android is real but limited: we expect Android to take a large part of the mid range phone market but that Apple will retain and extend its competitive advantage for tablets and high end phones

Facebook's audience and consumption growth is now generating substantial and rising display advertising revenue, with consensus estimates of $2 billion in 2010, up 160% YoY, and it will overtake Google on this count this year

The social network's growing position as the centre of the internet experience is enabling it to become a platform for other services, such as e-commerce, making it an increasing strategic threat to Google, as well as other players in the digital media

More importantly, like Google before it, Facebook’s scale and function has the power to disrupt the digital e-commerce and marketing models built over the past decade

In Q1, Google’s UK gross revenue increased 13% YoY to £602 million (net of hedging gains), down from the 18% growth in the last quarter and in Q1 2010

Slowing growth appears to be due to the weak state of the UK economy, with consumers and advertisers alike holding back on online spending compared to previous years

We have downgraded our 2011 UK growth forecasts for Google and internet advertising spend to 12% and 9% YOY respectively; while search remains the main market driver, online display is increasingly the key battleground

UK internet ad spend rose 13% YoY in 2010 to £4.1 billion; stripping out newly included formats such as mobile and Google hedging gains indicates actual growth was 15%

Growth in display, increasingly powered by Facebook and Google, continued to outpace that of search, with early signs that some brand advertising is shifting online

We have revised our growth forecast for 2011 to 10%, taking spend including mobile to £4,400 million, pushing the internet’s share of total advertising to 27%

European mobile revenue growth improved very slightly in Q4 2010, up by 0.1ppt in reported and 0.2ppts in underlying terms, but remained negative

While the improvement is welcome, growth remains very subdued compared to pre-recession levels, especially in Italy and Spain, which continue to lag the growth of the UK, Germany and France

The outlook for mobile revenue growth is bleak, with severe MTR cuts in Germany and the UK likely to drive growth down again over the next six months

2010 marked the recovery of lost ground since 2006 as ITV outperformed the TV advertising market, which saw year-on-year growth of 14-15%, and delivered £40 million in cost savings as well as benefitting from a further £20 million reduction in Channel 3 licence payments

The short term outlook for continued advertising revenue growth in 2011 looks promising in spite of the risks of renewed downturn due to uncertainties about the economy and retail spend



ITV’s five year transformation plan is now more clearly sign posted. The company seems to be taking the right steps, though it will take another year or two before the results start to show

Canal+ France has issued a prospectus in view of the April flotation of Lagardère’s 20% stake, which could still reach an agreement to sell with majority owner Vivendi

The prospectus provides a unique insight on the performance of Canal+, which has increased ARPU and profitability in the past three years, despite erosion of its subscriber base due to competitive pressures and the recession

Management’s revenue and profit targets for 2013 appear within reach, and we also see potential upsides

Q1 2011 TV NAR (Net Advertising Revenue) has delivered strong year-on-year growth of about 8%, yet the monthly variations are large, with a predictably sharp decrease in March based on past year comparatives countered by a large Christmas-style upswing in the Easter and Royal Wedding month of April

After several years of decoupling total display and TV advertising trends from those in the broader economy due to negative structural causes, the underlying positive correlations are expected to reappear as the structural factors subdue

The general economic outlook suggests stable growth in TV NAR during 2011 of about 5%, remaining flat to marginally positive in real terms beyond 2011 as long as conditions of weak economic growth last, but with significant risks of a sudden sharp downturn in the short to medium term

Last week Apple introduced a new subscription payment system for publishers using its devices, but also clamped down on publishers using their own payment systems, obliging them to offer Apple’s system (with a 30% commission) in parallel or leave the platform

For publishers selling their own content with no marginal cost, this is an extra cost that most will grudgingly accept. But aggregators obliged to pay rights-holders a fixed fee for each content sale, such as music or ebook vendors, face bigger problems: some will be forced off the platform

Apple is trying to strengthen its ecosystem, increasing the range and user-friendliness of apps and locking users in with content only usable on its devices. Yet it risks pushing some popular services off its platform entirely, increasing the appeal of the newly launched Android devices