Analyze This.
From the July 19, 1999, issue of Wireless Week
Analyze This: The Wireless Evolution
Industry Growth Sends Market Researchers To The Couch
By Brad Smith
Brian Cotton, global program manager for wireless communications for the Frost & Sullivan research firm, took a day off July
9. Of course, he had worked through the Fourth of July holiday.
Jane Zweig, executive vice president for Herschel Shosteck Associates, has had to learn so much new technical vocabulary in
the last year that sometimes her head hurts when she goes home.
Five years ago, Iain Gillott, now a vice president for International Data Corp., was the only analyst IDC had in the wireless
arena. Now there are nine.
Becky Dierks, wireless research director for the Cahners In-Stat Group (which is owned by the same company as Wireless
Week), remembers tracking wireless with a half-time position in 1992 and now has six analysts covering different areas.
Large analyst companies like the Yankee Group and The Strategis Group have added not only employees covering wireless
but also are looking into areas they didn't deal with a few years ago. They've also seen their businesses grow globally.
Everywhere you look, the market research analyst community covering wireless has changed dramatically. That reflects not
only the growth of the wireless industry itself, but also the technological changes the industry has been undergoing. More of the
analysts are looking at the implications of the Internet, and most of the companies are getting requests for very-targeted market
research.
"We see more and more customers from two years ago who weren't interested then in wireless but who are talking about it
now," said David Berndt, an associate director at the Yankee Group in Boston. "They recognize that it's a growing space.
More and more things are happening, like two-way messaging, data, Internet content, Web portals."
Yankee's wireless group is one of the largest divisions now for the company, which watches the broad areas of communications
and computing. Yankee has more than 120 employees globally.
The synergy between the Internet and wireless communications has caused a similar explosion at The Strategis Group in
Washington, D.C. Elliott Hamilton, wireless consulting director, also said wireless has been one of the big growth areas for the
75-person firm. Recent interest has focused on the new competitive local exchange carrier technologies, especially local and
multichannel multipoint distribution systems.
IDC has an equal number of analysts covering the areas of wireless communications, semiconductors and technology and smart
handheld devices. The research firm also has started paying more attention to Internet protocol backbone technology as the
wireless wave of the future.
"What's changed the most is the type of reports we do now," said Gillott. "We still do our forecasts every year, but we have
wireless data focus groups now, and we're doing a lot more on the Internet, data, fraud, churn and the like. There's a lot more
interest in core things that matter to the bottom line."
Frost & Sullivan has expanded from its three wireless analysts in Mountain View, Calif., to five there now, two part-time
analysts in New York City, two full-time in London, one in Beijing and one in Singapore. Wireless service providers continue
to be the mainstay business but more custom reports are being requested to answer specific questions, such as merger and
acquisition analysis.
Wireless now makes up one-fifth of the annual revenues of the London-based research firm, Ovum Research Ltd., which got
into the field in 1990. Wireless used to be a separate group for Ovum, but the company recently put it under the general
telecommunications area because of the convergence of technologies, according to Martin Garner, director of telecom products
and services in London.
Herschel Shosteck Associates has expanded the focus of its research, Zweig said, to recognize the Internet's impact on
wireless communications. "We've hired people, but also expanded and strengthened our strategic partnerships with RTT
Seminars in the United Kingdom and Tefen in Israel," she said. "Our focus is still the core wireless business, but we're analyzing
other competing technologies and access. If someone had told me two years ago I'd have to learn the vocabulary I have had to,
I wouldn't have believed them."
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