Australians increasingly online for health and wellbeing services

Telehealth before and during COVID-19 

This survey report is the second of three reports based on a behavioural change survey conducted by Venture Insights and commissioned by NBN Co (completed 28th April 2020). The aim of the survey was to understand how new needs due to COVID-19 had changed consumer broadband and technology usage. This second report investigates how COVID-19 has affected the use of telehealth, online education and online communication. Amongst other results, we found almost half (48 per cent) of survey respondents who had a medical consultation in the past two months have had a telehealth consultation, while almost one third (30%) households with young Australians aged 18-24 said their household had used social distancing time to undertake online work skills training. There has also been an increase in social video calls by up to 10% with friends, family and colleagues as compared to pre-COVID-19. Click here to download our free report.

Quibi – Adjusting expectations

Quibi app downloads and active users (m)

For an unproven service to attract 1.3 million active users in its first five weeks is impressive. But by its own account, Quibi’s launch underwhelmed. Sizeable subscriber targets—7 million by year one and 16 million by year three—justify a level of spend never seen in short-form video, but are ambitious for an experimental start-up with limited brand equity. The service’s failure to recognise the social side of mobile media, restricted use case and, critically, lack of a hit show increased scepticism of product/market fit. Now Quibi must adapt the product with knowledge of user preferences and reassess its targets, provided it can afford to do so. For more details, click to read a report from our UK research partner, Enders Analysis.

Amaysim acquires OVO Mobile

MVNO subscriber market shares (handset only)

MVNO Amaysim has acquired OVO Mobile and its 77,000 subscribers for $15.8 million. Amaysim will migrate OVO subscribers onto its network supply agreement with Optus, the migration is expected to complete in less than four months. This acquisition will expand Amaysim’s total recurring mobile subscriber base to 1.17 million, including 820,000 recurring customers, which generate 95 per cent of revenue. CEO of Amaysim mentioned that this transaction is in line with the company’s strategy to grow its recurring mobile subscriber base, both organically and through acquisitions. Venture Insights has published a report on Australian MVNO market overview in July 2019, where we believe differentiation will become important as MVNOs such as Amaysim and OVO look to bundle and cross sell adjacent services such as energy, internet, banking, travel and media. For more details on the Australian MVNO market, click to read our report.

Optus Q4FY20: a challenging quarter likely to have implications for mobile ARPUs

Operating and financial metrics – Optus Mobile  

On 28th May 2020, Optus announced its FY20 earnings update for the financial year ending 31st March. COVID-19 has clearly impacted telco revenues, including Optus. As we anticipated in our recent reports, lower consumer willingness to spend combined with disruption in supply chain has impacted handset sales. Roaming revenues have also been impacted with SingTel reporting postpaid roaming revenue down by 36% YoY in Q4FY20 in Singapore. There was pressure on mobile ARPUs pre-COVID-19 due to price competition and increased interest in cheaper plans by consumers, and Optus mobile ARPUs have declined 11% and 1% for both postpaid and prepaid respectively in Q4FY19 YoY. Optus retail fixed revenues declined by 6.9% between Q4FY19 and Q4FY20, and NBN wholesale pricing is putting fixed margins under pressure. As Optus migrates its remaining 135k HFC customers to NBN, fixed margins will shrink while NBN migration payments will decline. We anticipate a decrease in 5G demand due to COVID-19, as customers deal with income pressure during the economic slowdown. In particular, customers will be reluctant to pay any price premium for 5G services or handsets. Sale of tower assets would help balance sheet, but there is some major capex in the pipeline such as upcoming spectrum auctions. For more details, read our report. 

Women and UK TV

Percentage of men and women in full-time employment in the UK

In the past five decades, women have acquired an unparalleled financial autonomy by participating in higher education, joining the workforce and becoming entrepreneurs, despite still present barriers. Nevertheless, the portrayal of women in films, TV programmes, and even more so, advertising campaigns, continues to channel stereotypes of times long gone, leading to a dearth of role models for girls. Companies that commit to diversity internally are in a stronger position to recognize clichés and innovate in their activities and messaging—only companies that walk the talk will convince. For more details, click to read a report from our UK research partner, Enders Analysis.