Last week Samsung updated its flagship Galaxy S smartphone with a solid incremental upgrade that will cement its dominance of the high-end of Android, helped by a $14.7bn marketing budget and wide distribution

Impact will be strongest on other Android OEMs: the preceding S3 was heavily outsold by the iPhone and the new model is unlikely to change this, with similar design and positioning

Samsung’s launch event found room for a tap-dancing child and a live orchestra, but Google and Android were invisible. Samsung is clearly trying to relegate Android to a commodity and make its own brand dominant

Major European mobile operators were downbeat, with mobile revenue growth in Europe still massively underperforming the US, and their (misplaced in our view) anger at the OTT players being channelled into promoting new mobile OSs to compete with both Apple and Android

Samsung is cementing its dominance, while the other branded players focus on flagship models to try to cut through the noise. Meanwhile the flood of Android from Chinese OEM/ODMs is growing, at increasingly good quality. All other mobile platforms appear increasingly marginal

Superficially the handset industry appears to be stabilising around Apple, Android, and Samsung, plus the Chinese long tail. However, Apple, Google/Moto and perhaps Amazon may well all have disruptive moves planned for this year

Press advertising performed worse than we expected in 2012, with double digit declines both last year and this year now a very real possibility.

Previously resilient areas of the press have weakened. Popular national titles have seen sharp advertising declines, while faltering circulation in celebrity magazines exposes an underlying decline in demand.

Retail and services advertisers continue to pull spend from print, largely in favour of online, though TV is also very resilient. Industry efforts to offset these structural shifts include the development of trading platforms, further consolidation and a number of commercial editorial tactics.

Google has launched a dedicated ebooks store in the US, with support from 4,000 publishers, providing an ecommerce platform for independent book retailers

Google’s aim is not revenue from ebooks, though the market is attractive: we estimate ebooks will be 5% of the US books market in 2010 ($1bn) and could grow to perhaps half of all book sales within the next five years

Like Amazon and Apple, Google is using ebooks to support its broader strategy, driving search traffic and building an ecommerce platform. Revenue from ebooks is less important than supporting these objectives

National newspaper advertising revenues should be up 6-8% year-on-year in 2010, with ‘popular’ titles in particular attracting display ads from national retailer brands

Local and regional press advertising revenues will fall by about 6% year-on-year, mainly on the continued decline of recruitment classifieds

Publishers are exploring more efficient printing, new digital models, and staking a claim on e-commerce

European mobile revenue growth improved by 0.8ppts in Q3 to reach -0.3%, but all of this improvement and more was due to easing regulatory pressures, with underlying growth actually declining marginally

GDP growth continues to improve year-on-year, but in the current low confidence environment underlying mobile revenue growth is not (yet) responding. Smartphone sales are surging, but their net impact on revenue is hard to discern

Looking forward, the regulatory impact is likely to turn negative again for the next few quarters, so some underlying growth catch-up is required for revenue growth to stay at around zero

Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system is launching with a big bang: ten handsets, eighteen operators, and a massive marketing campaign

The OS itself is positioned firmly in between iPhone and Android in terms of ease-of-use and customisability; it is as fast as the best-in-class but no faster; and its interface is bold but will not be to everybody’s taste

A lack of apps, limited distribution, and expensive handsets will likely limit sales in the short term. Longer term, being late in the game with no truly compelling unique feature will make building a major position very challenging, but not impossible

US recorded music sales continued to slide in H1 2010 (-9% year-on-year for physical and digital formats (excluding ringtones), on a track equivalent basis). The UK recorded music market has been stronger than the US in recent years, and H1 2010 was no exception (down -1.5%)

Music major revenue declines on recorded music are being partly offset by growing licensing fees paid by music streaming services, as well as artist and merchandising services under 360 degree contracts

High margin music publishing revenues remain the pillar of music major profitability. These declined in H1 2010 due to the delayed impact on current quarterly results of the advertising recession in 2008/09, and we expect the advertising bounceback to be reflected in future results

Apple has upgraded its iPod family and also iTunes, which now includes new social networking features, and revamped Apple TV, now reinvented as a streaming-only device at a fraction of its former price

We expect iPod sales volumes to continue to slide despite the update, but estimate that improved ARPU will add $600 million to Apple’s topline in FY2011. However, iPhones and Macs are the company’s key revenue drivers

The revisions to Apple TV should drive up sales, but the content offering remains weak (especially outside the US) and it is joining an already crowded playing field – its main benefit is likely to be supporting the Apple ecosystem

The ebook market has broken out of its niche. Just 3% of the US consumer books market in 2009, ebooks are on track to hit 10% this year, with the UK following close behind. With global consumer books a $120 billion industry, disruption will have dramatic consequences

Amazon has sold perhaps 3-5m Kindles in 33 months – Apple sold 3m iPads in the first three months and 3m of the iPhone 4 in the first three weeks. Amazon might look as though it is on the back foot, but as this week’s £109 Kindle shows, the game isn’t over yet

We expect the ebook market to splinter, with tablets, ereaders and smartphones all playing important parts for different genres and demographics. This makes control of the Kindle platform a key advantage for Amazon