France’s Orange Sport closed last month after France Télécom declined to bid for a renewal of its four-year licence to broadcast Ligue 1 football. The future of its sister film channel, Orange Cinéma Séries, remains unclear.

The strategic aim for Orange Sport was confused from the start – standalone profit centre or loss leader, fully fledged alternative to Canal+ or add-on to it.

Orange’s premium TV project was a failure: we estimate its cumulative losses at €1.2 billion, while Orange’s broadband market share and retail price premium shrank during the four years of its operation. But it did arguably strengthen Orange’s hand in carriage negotiations with Canal+.

Apple sold 67m iPads through March 2012, and retains over 70% market share for premium tablets. Apple is aiming for the same long term dominance it enjoyed with the iPod, which maintained similar market share for a decade Microsoft and Google are taking radical steps to try to change this. Both are now making and selling their own hardware, while Google will sell a tablet at cost Microsoft and Google now have coherent tablet propositions, but they remain far behind on broader app ecosystems. Like Nokia, they are now back in the game, but they still have to play

News Corp will split publishing out of its business by creating a company to include newspapers in the US, UK and Australia as well as book publisher HarperCollins News Corp revenue growth has for some time been driven by explosive growth in cable network programming revenues, with slower revenue growth in film, TV, satellite TV and publishing The structural decline of print-based businesses is the main reason cited for the split. However, the Dow Jones and WSJ, both serving a B2B market, will be at the heart of the new publishing company’s value

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

Recent news flow and feedback from media buyers indicates that growth in UK internet advertising is slowing due to the ongoing weakness in the economy

Paid search, buttressed by its link to e-commerce and measurable ROI, is suffering less than internet display, with growth in spend on social media slowing and price deflation especially for non-premium inventory

Online classifieds are also being hit by the economic woe, resulting in some sectors growing more slowly and non-advertising communications taking a larger share of spend; the secular shift to the internet continues

The New York Times has generated $243 million from its digital services in the four quarters since the launch of its new subscription strategy, representing about 15% of New York Times Media Group revenues, according to our estimates.

This scale is the clearest signal yet that digital-only newsrooms could be able to generate enough revenue to fund expensive breadth and depth in journalism – though there will be many fewer profitable scale players than in the print news era.

Meanwhile, bundling digital and print subscriptions has helped the New York Times develop an integrated and valued approach to consumer service provision, and in so doing has mitigated print circulation decline, at least for now.

Analysis of comScore data suggests that ad volumes fell in April on Facebook’s PC-based website in the US and UK, which we estimate account for 60% of ad revenue Seasonal effects may account for some of the decline, but increasing pressure on ad performance and pricing, due to the tough economic climate, and slowing growth in PC usage of Facebook are other probable factors As a result we expect Facebook’s ad revenue growth slowdown to continue in Q2, with audience saturation in key internet markets and increasing mobile substitution limiting future growth potential from display advertising

In this presentation we show our analysis of revenue growth trends for mobile operators in the top five European markets (UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain). The historical analysis is based on the published results of the operators, although they include our estimates where their data is inconsistent or not complete. A copy of the underlying data in spreadsheet format is available to our subscription clients on request.

France’s sole cable operator, the smallest of the country’s five broadband providers, is sub-scale on the retail market and the heavy cost of servicing its debt leaves only meagre resources to leverage its superior network commercially

However, thanks to its white label deal with Bouygues, Numericable has resumed revenue growth and should achieve its 2014 debt/EBITDA target

As France Télécom’s network upgrade to fibre progresses, the main upside for Numericable lies in a closer alliance with Bouygues and possibly other DSL providers

The weak spot of 15,000 net TV additions in a positive quarter for operating profit growth reflects the continuing downward pressures of a struggling economy, with little indication of headwinds to do with connected TV Very strong growth in home communications in a weak quarter for TV net additions underline Sky’s competitive strengths in a market now close to maturity, as well as bringing revenue growth and churn reduction benefits Overshadowing Sky’s Q3 results, Ofcom’s investigation into the “fit and proper” status of News Corp’s shareholding in BSkyB is unlikely to affect the company in 2012