H3G has extended its deadline for hitting EBITDA breakeven, with this now around 12 months later than its previous forecast, we believe due to management failing to understand the extent of its churn problem 

The Zune Marketplace is no match for the iTunes Store, with a smaller repertory of music and no video to supply the Zune, since Microsoft has announced it will soon sell video for the top-end Xbox 360, around which its ‘home-entertainment’ strategy is based

We figure the costs of switching to the Zune are low, but Microsoft will be lucky to sell 1 million Zunes in the Christmas quarter – if it does, revenue will rise by less than 1%, so the Zune is of limited interest, whether successful or not

The prospect of a merger between Scottish Media Group (SMG) and UTV (formerly Ulster Television) provides exactly the positive news the commercial radio sector needs at this time. The merger would bring together two national stations, Virgin Radio and TalkSport, under the same ownership, creating opportunities to increase these stations’ audiences, grow their revenue yields, and improve profitability whilst, at the same time, reducing operational costs by combining their management and sales functions.

NTL’s Q2 results were again adversely affected by merger-related costs

Google’s phenomenal ascent is built on its domination of search, now the main growth driver of online advertising and accounting for 59% of the UK internet ad market which we estimate will be worth £2 billion this year or about 13% of total ad spend

The UK continues to be the largest and fastest growing national digital TV (DTV) market in Europe. We now expect 75% of UK TV homes to be equipped with digital reception by the end of 2006, rising to over 85% by the commencement of digital switchover in autumn 2008.

We have argued that mobile operators offering free broadband makes little sense from an economic perspective, and it now appears that it has little draw for consumers as well (which is lucky given its very high cost)

A large number of mobile operators are launching ‘convergence’ offers in Europe (including Vodafone across all its major subsidiaries), and this poor result in the UK suggests that this will prove a needless distraction for them

The latest RAJAR radio data (Q2 2006) delivered further bad news to the commercial radio sector, whose audience share has fallen year-on-year in all but four quarters of the last eight years to the benefit of the BBC. Commercial stations’ share of listening has dropped from a peak of 51% in Q2 1998 to below 43% this year, a level last witnessed in 1993. In the intervening thirteen years, commercial radio has launched one national and 124 local analogue stations, as well as 163 digital stations, although this unprecedented growth in supply has apparently failed to stimulate any long-term gains in share.

Market leaders Orange and Free increased their DSL retail market shares, while (newly IPOed) Neuf just managed to hold its retail market share (including AOL FR), while that of smaller ISPs (as a group) declined

Group revenue growth remains positive, but intensifying competition in residential services and the absence of further big wins in corporate contracts mean that it looks more vulnerable than it has for some time 

In the attached report we are publishing the 2006 edition of our regular review of UK mobile user trends, based on a survey of 1,000 adults. We look at handset ownership, replacement trends, handset manufacturer choice, network operator choice, camera phone ownership and usage, 3G handset ownership and usage and, finally, interest in Mobile TV.

We cannot see how Phones4U can fulfil the volume requirements without significant damage to its business and competitiveness, and Vodafone may also suffer from a vengeful CPW encouraging its subscribers to churn away. Vodafone appears to not understand that it is its competitors that are driving up subsidies rather than its business partners, and is instead trying to shoot the messenger

CPW has less to lose from the weakest two operators leaving than one might think, and the continued lack of differentiation from the operators means that its core business model is still very much secure

Vodafone blamed a harsh competitive environment and the timing of Easter for its low revenue growth in core markets reported this week. Its growth did at least not decline again, although we expect that Vodafone will again prove to be underperforming its competitors as they report their figures over the coming weeks 

CPW will also benefit from its partnership with AOL for portal advertising, content and other internet-based applications, relatively small but fast-growing value-added services in which CPW has little experience or market position, which will prove important in terms of both customer retention and margins.

True to pre-launch speculation, BSkyB has entered broadband with a price-cutting bang that will have sent tremors round the rest of the industry.

AOL UK offers buyers of its internet access business the prospect of instant scale in broadband, enabling 1,000 exchanges to be unbundled on a shared LLU basis. However, it has relatively few of the telephony customers which are necessary to exploit full LLU