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Entertainment software provided on physical disc – CD, DVD, video games – is in terminal decline. Paradoxically, this means that the content industries need to provide more support to the tangible medium, not less. The disc is still a hugely important part of the revenues of the entertainment sector.

Discs provide irreplaceable services. They can be easily bought on impulse, as a gift and for shared use of family and friends. Even dedicated digital buyers still purchase physical discs of the material that has greatest emotional relevance to them.

People over 35 are generally reluctant to switch to all-digital purchasing. These consumers now buy a clear majority of all entertainment software and will simply stop buying films and music when the disc dies. The content industries should spend more time and effort serving these people, slowing the decline of physical media.

The development of the Digital Britain infrastructure, introduction of tablets, increasing connectivity of TV sets and launch of on demand OTT services over the internet have greatly intensified interest in connected viewing and its impact on the traditional broadcast model No single source of audience measurement for viewing of long- and short- form video content across all screens yet exists, though current market data suggest that connected viewing occupies a c. 8.5% share of total viewing across all screens By 2020, we project the connected viewing share of total viewing across all screens will reach 20%, with tablets being the primary drivers of growth, in part incremental and in part substitutional to viewing to the TV set, where we expect the connected viewing share to remain under 5%

Persistent, anaemic economic growth continues to constrict all spend on recreation and culture, especially for lower income consumers. Female readers, the bedrock of the magazine industry, will be especially hard hit by government austerity measures, which will begin to bite in 2013

Smartphone and tablet ownership amongst wealthier consumers has already impacted their spend on magazines. The industry can expect further shocks as mobile device penetration grows among older and also lower income demographics

New publishing platforms pose familiar challenges: publishers must compete with new online players from very different sectors; complexity and rapid change are a constant; historically low print magazine subscription volumes make the transition for publishers to data strategies and to develop flexible charging models more demanding than might otherwise be the case

Facebook’s announcement of Graph Search, the company’s first move into socially-powered search which now in beta trial in the US, leaves many details unanswered including full launch and monetisation plans. Reliance on user-generated content from Facebook friends limits the usefulness of Graph Search as a conventional search engine and hence its impact on Google and other web search businesses in the near term. In the longer term, Graph Search could become a powerful recommendation engine for certain categories like travel, but its dependence on user data and privacy restrictions are likely to limit its wider utility and revenue potential.

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.

YouTube continues to evolve away from user-generated content with the expansion of its native Original Channels initiative in the US, Europe and Japan

Professional and semi-professional content is key to increasing YouTube’s sellable video inventory, raising advertising yield and attracting brand advertisers

Whilst YouTube is the leading global distribution platform for professional short-form video, it poses little immediate threat to TV viewing or revenues

15 million UK adults regularly (at least once a month) accessed the Internet from home in Q3 2001, the same as in Q2 2001. This stagnation is due to mainly seasonal factors and we expect growth of the home Internet population to be renewed in the autumn and winter.

Our lower forecasts are derived from an analysis of the numbers of households and small businesses that are apparently prepared to buy ADSL at current price levels, but also driven by concerns about this particular product. Users will have to acquire new email addresses and pay for a new email service. We do not think the product will work in networked multi-PC homes or offer ISDN users a real alternative. We see tremendous confusion in the marketplace from two competing BT Broadband offerings from BT Retail and BTopenworld.

This report contains our analysis of the French TV market. France, like the UK, is a difficult market for pay-TV and, recently, for some analogue terrestrial channels as well. We look at the analogies and differences between the two countries. In both places, excess competition and declining advertising revenues are beginning to create cracks in the noble edifices of the major TV groups. As in the UK, we conclude that analogue commercial TV may be less affected by digitalisation and pay-TV than most analysts expect.

We conclude that the economics of both free and premium digital terrestrial television are so unattractive that no rational bidder would enter the race for the licence. Likely advertising revenue on free channels will barely cover the transmission costs, while pay services will be crippled by astronomical subscriber management costs and low, or negative, margins on channels provided by BSkyB.

In this note we summarise the available evidence on trends in ARPU among European mobile operators. We demonstrate the increasing trend towards stable or increasing revenue per subscriber in key markets. The end to the long downward trend in voice ARPU is clearly in sight. This new stability is derived from increasingly firm call charges and slow growth in minutes of use. Local competitive conditions may disrupt this pattern in individual countries – and we demonstrate the countervailing trend in Finland – but, overall, the pattern is clear and will probably become more so in the next few months.

More important, perhaps, the current economics look acceptable both for BT's Wholesale and Openworld divisions - this note includes some detailed financial analysis. But even at the lower price levels, we remain unconvinced whether subscriber numbers will grow as rapidly as BT predicts. (BT is now saying that ADSL subscribers will be more numerous in 2005 than unmetered customers are today!)

 

 

The regional newspaper business in the UK is a mature industry with improved operating management and a small number of powerful players.

The bulk of the report examines in detail the structural forces determining the growth of ISPs in Wanadoo's main territories - France and the UK. It looks at the scope for raising revenues through broadband growth, increased advertising or e-commerce revenues. We look at market shares, and the factors that drive growth and decline.