In China, Alibaba and Tencent compete for food delivery to expand access to a fast-growing source of mobile user data, using their chat and wallet super apps to funnel customers to their food delivery apps

In the West, the rivalry is direct between the food delivery apps – Just Eat, Uber Eats, and Deliveroo – and the costs of last-mile delivery dissuade challengers

In the UK, Amazon will change the game if it succeeds in its proposed purchase of a minority stake in Deliveroo, which Uber failed to buy last year. Progress on the merger of Amazon and Deliveroo is suspended by the regulator

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

Facebook content shares suggest that misinformation had broad reach during both US and UK political campaigns, but outright fake news was rare, particularly in the UK 

Mis- and disinformation by both established and new publishers was distributed on Facebook, but monetisation took place predominantly off-site, and content was distributed by a wide range of search and social platforms 

Facebook has acted to limit the reach of disinformation, but can’t and shouldn’t be expected to do so alone as digital news distribution touches on complex questions including information and democracy, media literacy and heterogeneous cultural and social norms

Despite a slowing of circulation decline in 2016, UK national newspaper brands continue to face profound structural challenges, with print advertising spend expected to be down at least -15% for the year

In digital advertising, tech and distribution platforms continue to dominate growth with newspaper publishers and other content producers competing for an increasingly small slice of the revenue pie

In this context, many publishers are turning to paid membership and content subscription models to generate online revenues; success here will require a radical shift in thinking to a retailer mindset that delivers high quality reader experiences through integrated execution of tech, data, marketing and design

The sale of the i, the innovative 2011 launch by the Independent, inevitably led to its parent’s death in print form and pushes two media experiments into the marketplace

ESI Media becomes the first publisher to switch a traditional national news brand into a digital-only service, while Johnston Press has developed a new local-national platform to compete with Trinity Mirror

Content publishers will increasingly experiment with vertical models and membership models for a range of services including access to some content as the challenges of the digital advertising market begin to mount

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

 

CPW’s key operating metrics worsened again in the March quarter, with connection volume growth dropping to -19% and like-for-like revenue growth dropping to -5.5%

Weakness in the UK prepay market continued to affect CPW’s results, with volumes again down 30-40%, but contract sales did not mitigate this as much as last quarter, with growth in the UK but declines in continental Europe

Prepay is not likely to improve until the end of 2012, as the volume decline annualises out and more smartphones are available at prepay price points, and contract recovery is dependent on economic recovery

Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference, in conjunction with BNP Paribas and Deloitte, in London on 19 January 2012. The event featured talks by 13 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette. An edited transcript of notes taken during the speaker presentations follows.

The speakers were Sir Martin Sorrell (CEO, WPP), Glen Moreno (Chairman, Pearson), Martin Morgan (CEO, DMGT), David Levin (CEO, UBM), Dan Cobley (MD, Google UK & Ireland), Mike Pocock (CEO, Yell), Vittorio Colao (CEO, Vodafone), Charles Dunstone (Chairman, Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk Group), Stephen Carter (President, Alcatel-Lucent EMEA), the Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP (Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport), Neil Berkett (CEO, Virgin Media), Liv Garfield (CEO, Openreach) and Ed Richards (CEO, Ofcom).

Carphone Warehouse’s Q3 2011/12 volume and revenue was severely hit by a steep reduction in UK prepay volumes, with prepay subsidy cuts driving a drop in the UK market of as much as 40%

However, stronger volumes of higher margin contract handsets drove a small improvement in gross profit for the quarter

The unexpected prepay weakness means that Carphone Warehouse’s handset business will have roughly flat operating profit in its 2011/12 financial year at best, although given the negative external factors this would reflect a strong underlying performance