TalkTalk Group’s H1 results saw a disappointing increase in subscriber churn, causing a minor downward revision to revenue and volume guidance for the current financial year

Management is making good progress in reducing costs and the company remains on track to meet its financial guidance for the full year

Customer satisfaction is improving and subscriber volume is expected to stabilise by June 2012. But the strength of competition from BT Retail raises questions about the potential for future growth in revenue and hence cash flow

Carphone Warehouse’s H1 2011/12 results were overshadowed somewhat by the announcements that it is shutting down its UK ‘big box’ consumer electronics venture and selling its share in the Best Buy US handset business

Its actual core business operating performance was grim, with drops of 12% in volume and 4.5% in like-for-like revenue in the September quarter, with the slashing of prepay subsidies in the UK hitting volumes, and the late arrival of the iPhone 4S hitting revenue

With the iPhone 4S having now launched, H2 is likely to be much better, with like-for-like revenue returning to growth, and a focus on the core business will help in weathering the economic headwinds to come

Spotify has just passed the 2 million subscriber mark in Europe and the US, and could reach 2.5 million by the end of 2011

Smartphone adoption and partnerships with MNOs and ISPs have proven a key driver of subscription in Europe for Spotify, which lacks a telecoms partner in the US. We think subscription is profitable

Spotify’s lower usage caps on the freemium tier will help compress total losses in 2011 in relation to the £25 million reported in 2010, despite the US launch

Vodafone Europe’s service revenue growth improved marginally in the September quarter, a very solid performance under tricky circumstances, helped by good competitive performances and judicious pricing measures

The combined Europe and group common function EBITDA margin was again held flat, despite continued smartphone adoption pushing up handset costs, with strong cost control again evident

Pricing, competitive, regulatory and cost trends are all going well; but macroeconomic trends are clearly not, and are likely to make an acceleration in the second half of the year very difficult

Content farms, which once threatened to undermine traditional publishers by flooding the internet with low value content, face significant challenges

Google’s changes to its search rankings in February 2011 reduced the prominence of content farms in favour of higher value content suppliers

In recent quarters, revenue growth at Demand Media’s content farm business has halted and revenues of About Group have declined

Nokia has launched its comeback with two very solid Windows Phone devices at €420 and €270. Next year Nokia, like Apple, will have handsets with uniquely appealing industrial design. However, Nokia will not launch in the USA until 2012 and needs to add cheaper smartphones to the portfolio

Nokia and Microsoft face a hard struggle in establishing a third mobile app ecosystem. However, it is not impossible (Google has managed it in 18 months) and given more devices and the right execution they could manage it

2012 will be the critical year. We believe that the flaws in the Android proposition mean there remains a real window of opportunity. However, if Apple launches a cut-price iPhone then the market will be turned upside-down, again

BT reported its eighth successive quarter of strong growth in broadband volume and is aiming to complete deployment of next generation access one year early, yet within existing capex guidance for the group

Progress at Global Services and BT Wholesale is continuing, but remains very gradual

We continue to expect guidance for the current financial year to be met, though not significantly exceeded. But broadband momentum and excellent cost control suggest the prospects for FY2012/13 are improving

This presentation analyses the social games market in the UK. UK consumer spending on games software, like other recession-battered markets, has been flat for the last two years. At the same time, however, there has been rapid growth in PC-based social gaming, fuelled by the free to play nature of most games and viral marketing capabilities of social networks particularly Facebook. By 2015, we estimate that social gaming across PC, mobile and tablet devices could be worth up to £400 million, though much of this is likely to be driven by adding ‘social’ layers to existing games franchises.

Q3 results were contradictory, with accelerating demand for enhanced services and resilient revenue, but high churn and weak growth in fundamental cash flow

Cost increases struck us as justifiable in the longer term and were in some cases temporary. We share management’s confidence that there is better news to come, particularly at Virgin Media Business

Nonetheless, we remain of the view that future cash flow growth is likely to be significantly lower than that seen over the past two years, particularly given the deteriorating economic outlook

This report on UK consumer magazines charts the ongoing pressures on the sector: circulation of paid titles in H1 2011 of 445m copies was down 5% year-on-year, and down more than 20% in relation to the 562m copies sold in H1 2006. When the closure of Sky's titles is factored in, the year-on-year decline of both free and paid copies is 15%
A worrying decline in demand has taken place amongst the core magazine audience of women, whose frequency of purchase dropped in the recession and has not recovered with the squeeze on household budgets. Similarly, display advertising commitments to the magazine sector lost almost 25% of their value in the recession with no sign of subsequent recovery
Meanwhile, paid-for men’s magazines continue to crash, with free titles Shortlist and Sport adding further pressure on the paid weeklies and some monthlies. Amongst other genres, circulation of top tier ‘must have’ titles has been more resilient than second tier titles, and we suspect top tier titles are gaining disproportionate share of display advertising in the current difficult economic environment. Second tier titles are also likely to be the casualty of supermarket expansion via metro stores, which trim the magazines on offer to the top selling ones. Thus, while we consider the magazine format remains loved by readers, the pressure on publishers to downsize and consolidate portfolios will remain a feature of sector trends. Given the vast range of titles and publishers’ portfolios, we expect to see both winners and losers emerge. A second report, UK consumer magazines: the digital dimension [2011-099], focused on publishers' strategic and digital strategies, is forthcoming.