French ISPs are about to enter a disruptive four month window of penalty-free broadband subscriber churn, triggered by the VAT rise on IPTV

SFR has followed Iliad’s Free by offering unmetered fixed-to-mobile calls at the risk of ARPU decline

We expect Free’s market share to stabilise, whilst those of SFR and Bouygues should rise to the detriment of Orange

Smartphones are rapidly moving to become a majority of UK mobile handset sales, driving a surge in mobile internet use. Even if usage per user (currently growing) flattens out, we forecast mobile internet usage to grow from 1.8bn hours in 2010 to 7bn in 2015: 28% of total online time

This should drive the long promised growth in mobile advertising and we project UK spend, including search and display, will rise to £420 million by 2015, equivalent to 10% of PC internet search/display advertising

We expect the majority of this usage to be incremental to PC-based consumption, as users find new things to do and buy on the mobile web, driving the overall online advertising market to further growth

By 2015 we expect internet-centric smartphone penetration in the UK to reach 75% and mobile internet use to reach 28% of total time spent online. The dynamics and ecosystems of the mobile internet, and in particular the app model, will become a significant part of overall digital strategies

First seen as an interim reaction to slow networks and small screens, mobile apps have become a major new route to market for publishers and ecommerce providers, and are likely to spread to new areas

However, Apple is likely to continue to lose share in the internet-centric smartphone market, and publishers will face a far messier, fragmented world of competing platforms, app stores and payment systems

This in-depth report on pay-TV in France charts the course of Canal Plus and its main, but much smaller, competitor, TPS, over the period 2004-06. We anticipate pay-TV penetration will rise from 35% in 2003 to 38.7% by 2006, driven mainly by aggressive competition between TPS and Canal Plus in an improving economic environment.

We write regularly about Free, the French ISP that is leading Europe in unbundling local loops. Through its proprietary technology, the Freebox, Free now offers cheap DSL access, free VoIP (voice over Internet) telephone calls and a limited TV offer, over unbundled local loops. Iliad, Free’s parent company, is preparing for flotation and the company has released details about its performance and plans.