By firing Bob Chapek, the board responded decisively to a stream of negative press coverage and unexpected weak results.
Iger's priority should be unwinding Chapek’s revenue and distribution structure that separated creatives from investment control.
What will be the next transformational deal for Iger-led Disney? Strategic gaps include a youth audience pivoted towards social media and games
With major studios arguably over-indexed on SVOD, the stickier experiences of interactive entertainment and the metaverse will eventually form a critical pillar of studio D2C strategy, boosting subscription services and tying in closely with consumer products and theme parks.
Disney’s appointment of a Chief Metaverse Officer is good first step, demonstrating a strategic interest in the space. But other major studios remain cautious and distracted, with limited capability beyond licensing to engage in the metaverse for the next 24 months and possibly longer.
Meta will need to provide a strong guiding hand creatively and technically to ensure its new partnership with NBCUniversal is a success, and to evangelise the metaverse and its revenue model across the Hollywood studio content space.
The 'enterprise metaverse' is best described as the next generation of communications, productivity, and collaboration tools—with VR/AR the centerpiece of the experience. Big tech is investing billions to bring it to market quickly
Quest 2 VR headsets by Meta have changed the cost equation for VR deployment in enterprise—low-cost headsets already have enterprise demand outstripping supply globally
Microsoft and Meta are closely aligned and co-operating, but Meta has its sights on its own high-value commercial customers and can expect incumbents to fight to retain them
The UK's cultural industries remain the strongest in Europe and digital distribution is a strong vector for the globalisation of British culture
The international reach and reputation of UK news providers is unparalleled, with the BBC, the largest news provider globally, reaching half a billion users weekly
Independent commissioning drives a dynamic ecosystem of TV exports with global clout—worth an estimated £3.4 billion—that remains stable despite Brexit
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The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at COP26 sets out national pledges to achieve net zero and contain global warming to 1.8°C above its pre-industrial levels— COP27 will buttress pledges, now at risk from the energy crisis, and advance some nations to 2030.
The TMT sector is a leader on net zero in the private sector. Companies that measure their end-to-end carbon footprint throughout their supply chain—as many do in the UK’s TMT sector—can target their GHG emissions.
The TMT sector underpins the UK’s vibrant digital economy that enables hybrid work-from-home (WFH), which reduces fossil fuel use thus heading off both the energy crisis and the climate crisis.
The UK government is on the cusp of introducing legislation that will force online platforms to monitor and mitigate the presence and spread of harmful and illegal content, in a regulatory first for big tech.
Affected companies should take note: they will need to prepare for a higher level of transparency and communication with regulators, and larger service providers will require expanded moderation, user verification and research capabilities.
Users should be protected as platforms balance complex competing duties. News publisher content has a carveout, but publishers may experience butterfly effects as the online environment is reshaped.
Even though Facebook is not a producer of news, 6.5 million UK internet users claim to mainly source their news from the platform. Posts and shares by friends in the user's network, in the context of Facebook's algorithm, determine the order of stories in the personalised News Feed, removing the control of the news agenda that publishers have for their websites
Premium publishers operating a paywall (The Times, The Financial Times) have a lower key approach to Facebook than publishers generating advertising revenue from referral traffic to their websites or from on-platform consumption of Instant Articles. The latter will seek to stimulate social media engagement, optimising stories through attention-grabbing headlines, and installing Facebook’s share and like buttons on their websites
Case studies of the news stories that were prominent on Facebook (measured by likes, comments and shares) in the periods leading up to the Brexit Referendum and General Election 2017 votes respectively demonstrate that newspaper brands (the Express for Brexit, and The Guardian for the General Election) achieved the highest reach on Facebook during these periods, despite being ranked below other news brands (BBC in particular) in terms of traffic to their websites
Through innovations in processing, connectivity and cameras, Apple’s new device lineup dispels fears that the importance of integrated, profitable mobile hardware is in terminal decline
With the broadest range of iPhone price points ever, Apple is confidently balancing between profits and growing the valuable installed base
Apple’s long way to an AR future is now well paved, but a weakness in mapping could prove to be an Achilles heel
The successful launch of the Nintendo Switch creates a new console model, and demonstrates the staying power and long term value of great franchises
Microsoft reveals the specification for Scorpio, but it won’t be enough to catch up to Sony. New franchises, and probably new leadership, will be the key to stopping Xbox sliding into irrelevance outside North America
Sony’s PlayStation 4 now exceeds 60m units worldwide, allowing Sony more freedom to publish a wide range of challenging creative console games, while VR games continue to gain momentum
Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media & Telecoms 2017 & Beyond conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 2 March 2017.
This report contains the slides used by Tom Mockridge, Matthew Kirk, Andrew Griffith, and Geoff Moelis.