Avoiding Overhyped Technologies: The new Mobile Market "Sanity Check" advisory service

There are no second chances today. Investors and senior executives have zero tolerance for companies and individuals misreading the marketplace. Smooth optimistic, upward-curving exponential growth charts should provoke doubt and scrutiny.

This post highlights the "Technology Positioning and Market Due Diligence" advisory service from Disruptive Analysis.

Regular readers will know that I can be ruthless in over-turning hype and assessing the real factors behind new technology and product introductions, and estimating future market growth.

While there are certain technologies which I think are underestimated in importance, there are many more that get exaggerated. Forecasts are wildly optimistic, practical bottlenecks are ignored or overlooked. Real "addressable" market sizes are exaggerated on the basis of attractive but irrelevant large macro-scale numbers.

A significant amount of my work already involves giving "reality checks" to operators, vendors and investors. Looking at business plans, or listening to new product propositions and go-to-market strategies. Analysing them for weak points, flawed assumptions, and unidentified dependencies on other areas.

• Will growth scale smoothly? Are other analysts' forecasts realistic?
• Are your timelines realistic? What about testing? What about legacy integration?
• What are your implicit assumptions about mobile devices and user behaviour?
• Will your service really work on a 3G network? And indoors?
• Are there issues around regulation, number and interconnect fees?
• Are there fundamental market differences between US, Europe and Asia?
• How does your plan fit with strategies from Nokia, Apple, Google, Ericsson, Qualcomm. Microsoft or the largest mobile operators?

Perhaps you're a CFO feeling that a proposed business plan looks a bit too aggressive. Maybe you're a marketing director trying to appear visionary - but realistic. Perhaps you're leading a startup that's only got a single chance to get the right proposition and go-to-market approach. Perhaps you're on the executive committee of a company that's quite happy to have its preconceptions and assumptions challenged. Or an investor wondering if you've really found a hidden gem - or just something that's too good to be true.

Disruptive Analysis has a strong history of being ahead of the game:

September 2003 - New "multimode" wireless devices & services will cause disruption
June 2005 - UMA to play only a minor role in FMC
November 2005 - First analyst mention of the word "femtocell"
November 2005 - Mobile TV skepticism
April 2006 - Embedded-3G laptops are over-hyped
June 2006 - Mobile industry has forgotten about IMS-capable handsets
November 2007 - Mobile broadband is driving carrier data revenues, not content
June 2008 - Optimising handsets for femtocells

I'm not suggesting that I get everything right, because I've made some less-than-perfect calls as well. But I reckon my record on puncturing hype and predicting delays in new technology rollout hits well above average.

So if you want to have your business plan, or investment thesis, reviewed and dissected (under NDA), or if want a "sanity check" or someone else's market forecasts, or if you want to organise an internal workshop to test your assumptions about the wider market.... let me know.

Email: consultancy AT disruptive-analysis DOT com