In 2003, the Competition Commission imposed the CRR remedy as a condition of the proposed merger of Carlton and Granada to allay advertiser fears that the new ITV plc would use its market power to leverage higher airtime prices on ITV1 CRR made it possible to stop the ITV1 premium from rising and yet the ITV1 premium has risen almost without a blip since 2003. This note asks why The answer it seems has less to do with the negotiating muscle of ITV Sales than with the enduring USP and relative inelasticity of demand for ITV1 airtime and demand elasticity for the rest, while CRR has become increasingly irrelevant

Last week Samsung updated its flagship Galaxy S smartphone with a solid incremental upgrade that will cement its dominance of the high-end of Android, helped by a $14.7bn marketing budget and wide distribution

Impact will be strongest on other Android OEMs: the preceding S3 was heavily outsold by the iPhone and the new model is unlikely to change this, with similar design and positioning

Samsung’s launch event found room for a tap-dancing child and a live orchestra, but Google and Android were invisible. Samsung is clearly trying to relegate Android to a commodity and make its own brand dominant

Major European mobile operators were downbeat, with mobile revenue growth in Europe still massively underperforming the US, and their (misplaced in our view) anger at the OTT players being channelled into promoting new mobile OSs to compete with both Apple and Android

Samsung is cementing its dominance, while the other branded players focus on flagship models to try to cut through the noise. Meanwhile the flood of Android from Chinese OEM/ODMs is growing, at increasingly good quality. All other mobile platforms appear increasingly marginal

Superficially the handset industry appears to be stabilising around Apple, Android, and Samsung, plus the Chinese long tail. However, Apple, Google/Moto and perhaps Amazon may well all have disruptive moves planned for this year

Highlights of 2012, which saw double digit EBITA growth for the third year running, included ITV outperformance of the advertising market, strong organic growth in ITV Studios and a large increase in Online, Pay & Interactive revenues The outlook for 2013 suggests that EBITA could see double digit growth for the fourth year running. This is due to a number of factors that may include the bonus of extra NAR as BT launches BT Sport in the summer, arguably the biggest TV media event in recent years For the longer term, two key challenges in the Broadcast & Online sector are the retention of the ITV main channel audience share in an increasingly converged digital landscape and ITV’s ability to grow its online presence and drive new revenue streams

Both subscriber and revenue growth in the UK home communications market perked up in Q4, with an easing of weather related supply-side constraints helping the former and firm pricing helping that latter. We expect both trends to continue into 2013

BT’s high speed broadband net adds accelerated in the quarter, as did that of the other DSL operators, albeit from a much lower base. High speed broadband is already a mass market phenomenon within the BT and Virgin Media subscriber bases, with it only a matter of time before this spreads further

Virgin Media had a record quarter, as it continues to benefit from being able to offer high broadband speeds at very competitive prices, with its planned acquisition by Liberty Global unlikely to change its strategy or performance going forward

The UK 4G spectrum auction raised a total of £2.3bn, broadly in line with similar auctions, although the highest quality spectrum raised less and the lowest quality spectrum raised more than might have been expected

The main short term consequences are as was expected beforehand; Vodafone and O2 will launch 4G services around May/June 2013 and H3G will launch in October 2013

Longer term, O2 and H3G may suffer from their lack of 2.6GHz spectrum, although with other bands likely to come free within the next ten years this may not affect them

EE’s Q4 results exhibited a resilient performance for a market leader, with net adds and revenue growth slightly declining, but likely in line with a weak market

The 4G launch and partial rebrand were implemented in October 2012, and resulted in little customer leakage (a substantial short term risk), but also little evidence yet of ARPU enhancement (a longer term upside)

With the rebrand successfully completed, a headstart in 4G established, and significant scope for merger synergy savings to come, the outlook is positive

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 15 January 2013. The event featured talks by 14 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 15 January 2013. The event featured talks by 14 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. This report provides edited transcripts of the talks given by nine of those speakers: Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP Tim Davie, Acting Director General, BBC Dan Cobley, Managing Director, Google UK & Ireland Michael Tobin, CEO, Telecity Group Liv Garfield, CEO, Openreach Dido Harding, CEO, TalkTalk Group Victor Zhang, CEO, Huawei UK & Ireland Cindy Rose, Executive Director of Digital Entertainment, Virgin Media Q&A: Dido Harding, Victor Zhang and Cindy Rose Ed Richards, CEO, Ofcom

The development of the Digital Britain infrastructure, introduction of tablets, increasing connectivity of TV sets and launch of on demand OTT services over the internet have greatly intensified interest in connected viewing and its impact on the traditional broadcast model No single source of audience measurement for viewing of long- and short- form video content across all screens yet exists, though current market data suggest that connected viewing occupies a c. 8.5% share of total viewing across all screens By 2020, we project the connected viewing share of total viewing across all screens will reach 20%, with tablets being the primary drivers of growth, in part incremental and in part substitutional to viewing to the TV set, where we expect the connected viewing share to remain under 5%