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

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.

The stress on 21st Century Fox’s Italian pay-TV platform is easing as the worst recession of any G8 country is expected to end in 2014, and competitive pressure from Mediaset is weakening

Sky is sticking to a long term strategy, investing in the (unrivalled) quality of its offering and sustaining high recruitment costs. The subscriber base seems to have levelled off, revenues are stable, but profits have collapsed. Management plans cost cuts to raise profitability by 2016

The upcoming auction for the 2015-18 football rights could see Sky gaining more exclusivity at a higher cost, which it would have to recoup mostly by rising prices. The key potential upside resides in an Italian economic upturn – which is only conceivable in a few years

Google has lost another copyright proceeding in a major European market, this time in Germany (it will appeal), on top of the 2007 judgement in Belgium that found against Google in favour of Copiepresse, on behalf of a group of newspapers. In the US, Google is also facing litigation over copyright, plus the suits filed against YouTube

The long awaited first Android-driven handset was launched this week, and with the Google logo emblazoned on the back it has been swiftly christened the Googlephone

Encouraged by the way that Google has come to dominate the global market for online search advertising, Clear Channel and its rival CBS Radio are now eyeing the potential to dominate the global market for online radio advertising, and fend off Google. In July 2008, Clear Channel announced its plans to dominate the ‘internet radio’ market, by launching a ‘portal’ offering a vast array of radio programming, along with a new business unit to sell online advertising inventory. Although Clear Channel’s targets initially are US advertisers and US internet users, the company will likely target the UK market when it eventually decides to roll out its business model for online radio to the rest of the world. As a result, within the next decade, the UK commercial radio sector could face an additional source of competition from overseas media companies offering radio content delivered via the internet

The much anticipated iPhone 3G is due to launch in July; it will include 3G and GPS, but will otherwise be quite similar to the old model, and is still a little off-the-pace in feature terms

The recorded music market decline continued without pause in 2007, with global sales down an estimated 11% in value. Physical and internet piracy continue to drive the CD sales decline, along with substitution to downloads, and the bankruptcies of physical retailers in the US and UK. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPod+iTunes music ecosystem continues to be favoured by customers, driving the growth of the digital music market, as ringtones stabilise globally. These recorded music market trends are reducing music publishers’ associated royalty income, although offset by rising royalties from the use of music on broadcast media, film, advertising and the internet

Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! represents the software giant’s last opportunity to compete with Google in the rapidly growing market for online advertising, which is forecast to double to $80 billion within three years

Powered by strong computer sales at Apple stores and surging European sales (and the weaker dollar), Apple’s dollar revenue for Q1 FY2008 rose 35% year-on-year to $9.6 billion, exceeding guidance of 29%