UK mobile service revenue growth stayed positive in Q3 2014, albeit at a slightly lower level than last quarter, an achievement given performance in recent years, but a slight disappointment given the previous improving trend. Pricing trends were a little worrying, but data volumes continue to accelerate markedly

With Phones 4U ceasing to trade towards the end of the quarter, Q4’s subscriber shares will be largely determined by where its prior customers end up. With these representing 13% of market gross adds which implies 65% of net adds, the impact is significant

Merger talks underway with the parents of O2/EE and BT, with H3G reportedly getting involved, will have an impact whether they lead to a deal or not; if either EE or O2 (or both) remain independent within the UK, they will likely need reinvigorating and re-motivating as to their raison d’etre or risk drifting without a clear direction

Apple has fulfilled its promise to roll out innovative new products this year, launching Apple Watch into the nascent wearables market and Apple Pay, a new mobile payments service, as well as moving the iPhone into ‘phablet’ territory.

The larger-screened 6 and 6 Plus should revive growth in iPhone sales and ASP, as well as providing another variable to compete in the mid-tier handset segment; Apple Pay further enhances Apple’s lock on its customer base.

Apple Watch’s likely impact is harder to discern; to date sales of smartwatches have been lacklustre but although Apple’s offering is the most commercially viable yet, it still feels like a solution in need of a problem.

Amazon has entered the increasingly crowded digital entertainment TV device marketplace, one which could be strategically more important for the ecommerce giant than tech rivals Apple and Google

The frictionless integration of entertainment and ecommerce on TV represents a bigger consumer milestone than competitor services are offering, and Amazon’s brand has huge appeal, though at present it has less market traction for streaming than it does for other products

Content owners and broadcasters remain the real TV gatekeepers, with integration of TV and digital a service-level pipe dream for now, and so Amazon will likely have to accept being one of many, rather than the runaway winner as it is in books

The French Professional Football League (LFP) is to auction its 2016-20 broadcasting rights next month, one year earlier than expected. The anticipated auction (and short notice) increases pressure on rival LFP broadcasters – a failure to renew their existing rights deals would unsettle their position for over two years

Due to uncertainty over the future ownership of Canal+ and the political background of Al Jazeera’s beIN Sports we believe that both would prefer to maintain the status quo: the top two weekly games on Canal+ and the other eight on beIN Sports

The LFP rights are precisely packaged to prevent this, and to force the two to compete at least for one lot. As the market leader Canal+ has more to lose, while beIN Sports could sustain its current complementary positioning with fewer games

Explosive growth in take-up of smartphones and tablets means that the effective size of the internet will increase by several multiples within the next few years. This transformation in scale comes with a major change in character and operating dynamics, creating new opportunities and revenue streams.

Twitter is unique amongst social apps: it gives new users a blank canvas in which they can (and must) create their own social network reflecting their own interests, hence building an ‘Interest Graph’, but onboarding new users remains a challenge.

Revenue at Twitter is now on a $600 million annual run-rate, scaling rapidly since the introduction of ‘native ads’, and seems set for further growth: the key question is whether it can achieve breakout user growth and mass market scale.

Apple has now sold 40m iPads – we estimate 4 to 5m in the UK – and goes into the Christmas season with no credible competitors beyond Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which is so far only available in the USA

Android phones are selling in huge numbers at half the price or less of the iPhone, but would-be iPad competitors are the same price or higher. With the continued absence of a meaningful content ecosystem for Android tablets it is hard to see consumers buying them in substantial numbers

Competing Android tablets have sold around a tenth as many units as the iPad, but others have sold far less: RIM’s PlayBook has been a major disappointment, forcing RIM to write off $485m of inventory

Carphone Warehouse’s H1 2011/12 results were overshadowed somewhat by the announcements that it is shutting down its UK ‘big box’ consumer electronics venture and selling its share in the Best Buy US handset business

Its actual core business operating performance was grim, with drops of 12% in volume and 4.5% in like-for-like revenue in the September quarter, with the slashing of prepay subsidies in the UK hitting volumes, and the late arrival of the iPhone 4S hitting revenue

With the iPhone 4S having now launched, H2 is likely to be much better, with like-for-like revenue returning to growth, and a focus on the core business will help in weathering the economic headwinds to come

Apple is now a $108bn company, with annual revenue up 66% from a year ago and 40% gross margins. September quarter iPhone sales dipped to 17m ahead of a new product launch, but Apple still sold 72m in the last 12m, compared to 40m in the 12m to September 2010

Apple has now sold 40m iPads for $20.3bn revenue, and 11m in the last quarter. All other competing devices have sold perhaps 4m. We expect Apple’s dominance to continue through 2012 and potentially beyond

Google’s Android sold even more smartphones than Apple, activating 150m in the last 12m and 55m in the September quarter. Yet in October Apple sold 4m of the new iPhone 4S in just three days, bringing in around $2.6bn: Google’s annual run-rate mobile revenue is now $2.5bn

The Guardian has finally launched its iPad app: of the UK’s paid daily newspapers all but the Mirror and Independent now have iPad apps. All of these require payment and all but the FT use Apple’s iTunes billing

Apple has moved to smooth out the buying and reading process with the new Newsstand feature for iPad and iPhone, which adds better discoverability and automatic downloads to the existing subscription offer. This also makes it harder for readers to move to other platforms

There are now 3-4m iPads in the UK: this is more than the 2m people who buy a broadsheet everyday, but it is not clear how many can be converted. Moreover, iPad editions bring in annual revenue per reader of £100-125 where a print reader averages £435: a scale problem remains

Amazon has taken the ereader to $79 and the tablet to $200. The Amazon Fire is everything that Android tablets are not: a coherent high-quality user experience rather than a box of components. It will sell well, while new sub-$100 Kindles will reinforce Amazon’s dominance of ebooks

Amazon began as a bookshop, but just 30% of Q2 North American sales were physical media of any kind. The Fire is part of a broader strategy – to embed Amazon in online buying of everything from shoes to nappies to iPads and TVs. The Kindle Fire is a shop window on every coffee table

Media companies should not expect Amazon to be a more congenial partner than Apple. Amazon’s long-term stake in the health of the books or magazine industries is limited: the Kindle is a new way to reach readers and viewers, but not a saviour