It’s almost impossible to believe, but there it is: the cable industry is actually outgrowing the wireless sector.
This stunning factoid comes courtesy of the latest Weekend Media Blast piece from Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett.
One odd thing about the current state of the wireless phone market is that while demand for handsets seems to be in free fall–Canaccord Adams’s latest forecast, for instance, has 2009 units down 26 percent–the U.S. wireless carriers all seem fairly upbeat on their growth prospects for 2009.
DISH Networks did not have a good third quarter. The company’s expected profits of 58 cents per share actually came in at 20 cents. Not too much luck getting or keeping customers, either–the network lost 10,000 customers in the third quarter alone and attracted a disappointing number of new subcribers. All of this and more, according to Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett, spells trouble.
In wireless, it appears, the old adage applies: The rich get richer. The poor? Not so much. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are reporting impressive numbers while everyone else (Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Metro PCS and Leap Wireless) is not. The gap between the tiers in the market are “stark,” according to Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.
Comcast’s earnings get announced before tomorrow’s opening bell, but the company has a couple of things going for it that might be helping analysts predict what those numbers will look like. First, 70 percent of consumers prefer bundling, and currently only cable can offer it. Second, even as we head into a recession, broadband and video are considered “no more discretionary for most families than running water.”
Voters who use only a wireless phone are being undercounted by political pollsters. Given that these voters skew young, that young voters (according to USA Today) favor Barack Obama over John McCain by a margin of 61 to 32 percent, and that many polls don’t include wireless phones in their samples, it seems there would be a discrepancy in poll results–leaning toward the Republican hemisphere. Don’t forget to vote, my friends.
In a stunning ruling that has huge implications for the cable industry, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York has cleared the way for Cablevision (CVC) to offer so-called “network DVRs,” in which consumers would be able to record video programming for future viewing “in the cloud,” rather than relying on the hard-drives in their set-top boxes.
Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research wrote an amazing report entitled “And Now for the News…The Emperor Has No Clothes.” If you can get a copy, read it. Starting with the disappointing but expected news that journalism is no longer a service consumers desire to pay for, he moves on to the problems facing Internet video.
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