British mobile phone subscribers are holding on to their handsets for longer, hindering a revival in the telecoms industry. This is the upshot of of a new report by Taylor Nelson Sofres which examined mobile ownership in the year to April. With mobile phone penetration levels reaching saturation level in the UK, manufacturers and retailers… Continue reading Mobile Users Hanging On To Phones, Reveals Study

The development of digital terrestrial television (DTT) has been hampered by substandard marketing, lukewarm government support and poor targeting of services, according to a new report from the Yankee Group. Nonethess, the study, entitled ITV Update, Part 1:DTT Down, But Is It Out?, is essentially optimistic about the future of the medium. The report concentrates… Continue reading DTT To Learn From Setbacks, Says Yankee Group

After much speculation over its future, Attic Futura is set to be bought by the French media group, Hachette Filipacchi for around £40 million. The UK publisher was put up for sale last year by its Australian owners, PMP. However, the German company, H Bauer soon pulled out of the bidding and a proposed £55… Continue reading Attic Futura Set To Go Continental

WPP’s Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide division has acquired 70% of Era Public Relations Company, one of Taiwan’s leading technology-specialist public relations firms, the group announced this morning. Era provides communications services to blue-chip clients including Hewlett Packard, Dell Computer and Oracle and reported revenues of US$1.5 million for the year ended 31 December 2001 and… Continue reading WPP Acquisition Builds Asia-Pacific PR Network

The advertising market is improving more quickly than was predicted just a few months ago, Doug Flynn, CEO of Aegis, has told the Wall Street Journal in interview. The paper reports that Aegis is now expecting US adspend to rise 1.5% in 2002, up from a previous forecast of -0.2%. Whilst Asia is also predicted… Continue reading Aegis Chief Sees Improvement In Media Spending

There will be approximately 27 million ‘e-workers’ across Europe by the end of the decade, according to the UK Institute for Employment Studies (IES). Currently, more than 9 million people, or 6% of the entire European workforce, have a job which involves an element of IT. By 2010, this will have risen to a sixth… Continue reading Number Of Euro ‘E-workers’ To Treble By 2010

The market’s fear of the internet, prevalent since the collapse of the dotcom ‘bubble’, may now be showing signs of waning, as the number of company closures begins to fall. The fall-out of the internet and technology markets over the last couple of years has led to the demise of a large number of companies,… Continue reading Insight Analysis: Is Investor Confidence In The Web Returning?

By 2006, Germany will have overtaken the UK to become Europe’s most profitable digital pay-TV market, according to business information company, Datamonitor. The UK market was rated the most valuable in Europe last year, bringing in $3.5 billion in revenues. By contrast, the preponderance of free to air channels and licence free public funded channels… Continue reading Germany Set To Take Digital Crown

Pace Micro Technology, the set-top box manufacturer, announced today that profits had fallen 70% year on year, reflecting a lack of growth in the digital TV market. Pre-tax profits, before one-off costs, for the year to June totalled £13.1 million, down from £44.3 million for the same period last year. Similarly, sales dropped by a… Continue reading Falling Profits Force Pace To Take Action

Despite expectations of the beginning of a recovery in advertising market conditions in the second half of the year, the outlook still remains decidedly unclear. A US mid-year media conference last month heard key players talk about the bottom of the recession, rather than the beginning of a period of genuinely strong growth. This assessment… Continue reading Insight Analysis: Media Healthcheck – June 2002