Launched to the world in September 2017, TikTok is the first Chinese app to pose a serious threat to Western social media companies as it attracts hundreds of millions of Generation Z users around the globe

Privately-owned parent company Bytedance earned $7 billion in online advertising revenues in 2018 and is valued at $75 billion, placing it ahead of Uber as the world’s most valuable internet start-up, with an IPO likely this year

Bytedance’s goal of earning half its revenue outside China by 2022 is far from certain. In order to hit the target, TikTok will need to attain super scale with best-in-class revenue per user, an unlikely combination

Across the EU4, pay-TV is proving resilient in the face of fast growing Netflix (with Amazon trailing), confirming the catalysts of cord-cutting in the US are not present on this side of the Atlantic. Domestic SVOD has little traction so far.

France's pay-TV market seems likely to see consolidation. Meanwhile, Germany's OTT sector is ebullient, with incumbents bringing an array of new or enhanced offers to market.

Italy has been left with a sole major pay-TV platform—Sky—following Mediaset's withdrawal, while Spain's providers, by and large, are enjoying continued growth in subscriptions driven by converged bundles and discounts.

UK broadband net additions in Q3 2008 fell sequentially, the first time this has happened in a third quarter. Q3 net adds almost halved year-on-year to 320,000

Carphone Warehouse’s distribution side was very strong in revenue terms in the September quarter, with an underlying (ex-currency) growth of 11%

The company is right to be cautious about the Christmas trading environment, although we believe that it will continue to do well in relative terms at least, and even has a fighting chance of hitting the distribution revenue guidance made back in April

Fixed line revenue growth was hit by churn and spin down at AOL UK, and churn in the non-broadband base. Fixed line EBITDA grew encouragingly as cost savings from LLU kicked in, but overall financial performance was marred by the cost of free laptop and retention offers at AOL UK

Distribution connection numbers were strong (+9%), especially on contract (+21%), despite a reduction in store expansion and the consumer slowdown which is affecting other consumer electronics businesses

Prisa, the 98% owner of Sogecable, has put Spain’s leading pay-TV platform Digital+ up for sale in order to make a large reduction in its debts

Carphone Warehouse had a solid quarter on the distribution side given the current environment, with 6-7% underlying organic retail growth and roughly stable like-for-like figures

This report explains Ofcom’s ongoing review of Openreach’s financial framework, why it is important, the myriad factors involved, our view on the likely outcome and the implications for BT and unbundlers, in particular Carphone Warehouse and BSkyB

Carphone Warehouse had a solid quarter, and its expectation of a currency-aided 9-10% growth rate in 2008/2009 distribution revenue looks achievable, as does guidance of 4-5% growth in fixed line revenue, unless loss of telephony-only customers accelerates

Distribution growth improved considerably (retail grew 13% versus 8% last quarter), with strong contract sales more than counteracting a relatively weak prepay performance