Reports: Alphabet

Q2 2018 delivered contrasting milestones for the tech majors with Apple becoming the first company to have a trillion-dollar market capitalisation while Facebook simultaneously saw the single biggest one-day loss in market capitalisation in the history of US stock exchanges.

In Q1 2018 advertising revenue and services revenue drove strong growth for the tech majors – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, with Alphabet and Apple retaining their respective leads in each of those revenue segments but losing market share. Subscriptions were also a big part of the Q1 narrative; Amazon and Apple highlighted significant subscription growth underpinning their growing service businesses.

In Q1 2018 advertising revenue and services revenue drove strong growth for the tech majors – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, with Alphabet and Apple retaining their respective leads in each of those revenue segments but losing market share. Subscriptions were also a big part of the Q1 narrative; Amazon and Apple highlighted significant subscription growth underpinning their growing service businesses.

This report is a write up of key themes from one of MIDiA’s 2018 keynotes looking at the key trends, innovations and disruptions that will shape media and technology over the coming years. The full presentation is published online alongside this report.

In this report MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech across music, video, media in 2018. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Apple Music, Candy Crush...

The announcement in June 2017 that YouTube had 1.5 billion monthly logged-in users was the first official user number since the 2013 tally of One billion unique monthly users. This metrics reticence stands in stark contrast to rivals in the attention economy, such as Facebook, which provides quarterly updates on its continued growth in active users.

Acting as a Trojan horse in consumer electronics, voice control slipped under the radar compared to more bombastic new technologies such as Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence, to quietly become a potential paradigm shift in the computer interface.