Trinity Mirror, Northern & Shell and DMGT helped the market more or less offset the absence of the News of the World, though impressive volumes have come at a price

More generally, newspaper circulations have a temporary reprieve, as strong newsflow but also discounts and marketing techniques have been deployed to attract readers

What happens next at News International, and also competitor responses, could soon change market dynamics again

The uncovering of criminal behaviour at one newspaper (so far) has led to a much broader review of how the press is regulated, seeking to put a stop to dishonest and unethical behaviour, legal or illegal, and touching on ownership, ethics and on the freedom of the press in general

However, much of investigative journalism relies on activities that are certainly dishonest and arguably open to prosecution: any new code and enforcement will need to rely on judgement and selectivity, not prescription

Statutory, compulsory, enforceable regulation of the press will risk running into the sand in a world in which casual chat between friends is viewable by millions on social networks and celebrity gossip is sent to pixel in Los Angeles or São Paulo, not Wapping

Apple has now sold 25m iPads since launch, worth $15bn, and will probably sell 40-50m in 2011. Competing tablets have sold perhaps 2-3m in total so far and will not be competitive with the iPad until 2012 at the earliest

Android phones are now far outselling iPhones, but benefit from a narrower user experience gap and from selling at a half of the price. Android tablets must compete with the iPad at the same or higher price points, a far harder task. We believe it is possible the iPad will retain a 50%+ share

Media companies have veered from euphoria to outrage when contemplating the iPad and its autocratic creator. Android offers them little chance of either in the near future

The most dramatic observation from our survey is the surge in mobile data service usage: 48% of UK mobile users now use a data service at least once a month, up from just 30% last year. This increase is substantially all from the increased number of internet-centric smartphones (i.e. iPhone, BlackBerry and Android handsets) in the base

The internet-centric smartphones themselves had substantially no reduction in data usage penetration rates (all at 90%+) despite their volumes surging, with users from all age and socio-economic groups using them for data services. Data service usage penetration on a daily basis actually increased for Android and BlackBerry handsets

This supports our view that it is the nature of these handsets in terms of their ease-of-use for data services that is driving overall usage, and that overall data usage will continue to surge as they continue to diffuse through the subscriber base

The Hargreaves review of UK intellectual property law proposes to introduce a “limited private copying” exception to legalise existing recopying across devices

The proposed Digital Copyright Exchange (DCE) is a good idea, but industry reticence to financing and using a DCE is a challenge

Practical solutions to licensing digital content-based services should be the focus of Coalition efforts to spur innovation and economic growth

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.

In the March 2011 quarter Apple’s revenue was up 83% year-on-year and net income up 95%. iPhone sales are up 113% and the iPad has sold 19.5m units in the last 12 months. Even the ‘legacy’ Mac business grew 32%, and Apple now has over $65bn cash in the bank. Not bad for a niche business

With single digit penetration in its core growth businesses, Apple has the opportunity to continue growing fast for some time to come

The threat from Google’s Android is real but limited: we expect Android to take a large part of the mid range phone market but that Apple will retain and extend its competitive advantage for tablets and high end phones

Facebook's audience and consumption growth is now generating substantial and rising display advertising revenue, with consensus estimates of $2 billion in 2010, up 160% YoY, and it will overtake Google on this count this year

The social network's growing position as the centre of the internet experience is enabling it to become a platform for other services, such as e-commerce, making it an increasing strategic threat to Google, as well as other players in the digital media

More importantly, like Google before it, Facebook’s scale and function has the power to disrupt the digital e-commerce and marketing models built over the past decade

In Q1, Google’s UK gross revenue increased 13% YoY to £602 million (net of hedging gains), down from the 18% growth in the last quarter and in Q1 2010

Slowing growth appears to be due to the weak state of the UK economy, with consumers and advertisers alike holding back on online spending compared to previous years

We have downgraded our 2011 UK growth forecasts for Google and internet advertising spend to 12% and 9% YOY respectively; while search remains the main market driver, online display is increasingly the key battleground

UK internet ad spend rose 13% YoY in 2010 to £4.1 billion; stripping out newly included formats such as mobile and Google hedging gains indicates actual growth was 15%

Growth in display, increasingly powered by Facebook and Google, continued to outpace that of search, with early signs that some brand advertising is shifting online

We have revised our growth forecast for 2011 to 10%, taking spend including mobile to £4,400 million, pushing the internet’s share of total advertising to 27%