On 29 November, the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press finally issued its report. Its verdicts on the conduct of the press, politicians and police were less severe than expected.

The three main political parties have accepted most of the report’s recommendations, but have disagreed over the use of statute. As expected, the Conservatives are against, while Labour and the Lib Dems are in favour.

Subsequent cross-party talks and negotiations between editors have so far failed to produce agreement, with the process only becoming more opaque as time goes on. The shape of the future regulatory system remains uncertain.

The linear TV broadcast industry has kept its oligopolistic structure remarkably intact over the last 50 years against a background of much technological innovation and re-regulation, but now faces a new wave of innovation that promises growth of non-linear at the expense of linear True disruption can only occur by solving the device challenge of developing on a mass scale new, compelling and innovative ways to access content, but so far non-linear has achieved a very small share of total viewing while linear viewing levels are as high as ever Although non-linear viewing may become substantial, it is unlikely to result in fundamental change in the distribution value in the industry

The third of our four reports on specialist advertising focuses on the automotive sector and AutoTrader's role at the heart of the dealer ecosystem

The used car market has been remarkably resilient in recent years, but as with many classified categories the core trend in digital is diversification to a suite of services from a core listings model

AutoTrader's owners Apax Partners and Guardian Media Group will of course be considering their options in terms of an exit from their investment

The broadcast and online success of the London Olympics and Paralympics, though never in doubt, was beyond expectations.

Despite the large growth in mobile devices and rise in social media, audience data underlined the importance of live viewing on the TV set in the living room.

Although commercial audiences (other than Channel 4) took a battering, the Olympics/Paralympics was a blip and unlikely to harm budgets across the full year or have significant knock-on consequences in 2013.

Amazon, Nokia and Apple are expected to announce new mobile devices in the next fortnight. We outline the main products and features expected and their implications

Around 125m smartphones were sold globally in Q2, up over 30% from Q2 2011. Around 450m mobile handsets were sold in the quarter, giving smartphones a volume share of around 28% Apple and Android dominate with a combined of 85% of units sold, and a cumulative total of 810m devices running their mobile platforms. Of these we estimate that 680m are active, of which 95m are tablets Android arrived later and has grown faster, but Apple’s market share of smartphones as been steady at 20-25% for several years: Android’s growth has come at the expense of Nokia, RIM and feature phones

YouView, the hybrid DTT/IPTV service backed by the public service broadcasters, is here, but with an initial retail box price of £300 it will be heavily dependent on the subsidies offered by ISP distributors BT and TalkTalk The TV market has evolved since YouView’s conception in 2008, with many other internet-enabled options now available; its managed and integrated approach gives it some advantages but doesn’t make it a ‘must have’ We expect YouView to mainly appeal to Freeview and BT Vision upgraders and project take-up between 1-3 million TV homes by 2015, though if the product improves and pricing falls dramatically it could see faster growth

In this report we show the findings of our 2012 UK mobile user survey. The report is a wide ranging analysis of the mobile market based on our consumer research, focusing on the competitive landscape among the mobile operators and smartphone manufacturers, and the changing consumer behaviour that has and will continue to impact the market

The London Olympics promise to be a major success for both the free-to-air broadcast licensees and the leading pay-TV platforms as a result of co-operative deals being forged between them

Recent distribution agreements with Sky provide the BBC and Eurosport with a massively bigger window to showcase their credentials in in-depth sports coverage and new technologies, especially 3D

For Sky, and assuming VMed in due course, there exist a number of potential indirect commercial benefits, as the message is sent out loud and clear that there is no better place to go for London Olympics free-to-air coverage than the pay-TV platforms

Mobile operators, services and handset makers are diverging – they all come to the MWC but have increasingly little to say to each other as their businesses move in very different directions

In the context of -5% European mobile revenue growth, the MNOs at the MWC were a sober bunch, focusing on industrial services, defensive moves around messaging, and a (not unreasonable) plea to regulators for some relief

As competition in Android intensifies between hundreds of black plastic rectangles, the picture for OEMs looks tough but Google’s failure to make Android work well for developers may also start to bite, leaving an opening for Nokia and Windows Phone