What Display Daily thinks: I didn’t even get past my first cup of coffee this morning before someone of repute in my contact list had shared a post about market research on LinkedIn, I think it was for quantum dots. As anyone who has assiduously read their horoscope every day and tracked life’s real outcomes, you are never in for pleasant surprise when an influential stranger notices you.
When it comes to display market numbers there’s Omdia, IDC, Yole, DSCC and then more regional data from Sigmaintell and UBI Research. I am sure everyone has a favorite analyst, I probably missed yours. They are, of course, all wrong about the future because there is an official celestial ordinance that specifically states, “No persons, other worldly astrologers in sequins, or magic glass balls can predict the future with any degree of accuracy and don’t be buying umbrellas because a herd of cows decided to take a load off.”
If you ever want to know what market research reports not to buy, just do a search for posts in the last 24 hours on LinkedIn, keyword displays, note the offending posters over the course of two days, eliminate the research firm names from your sources. Then again, if you have a big meeting with investors, you can ignore this advice, and stick a chart at the front of your pitch deck, with data from one of the aforementioned posters, and let rip on how the market for quantum dots may just hit a trillion dollars by 2030 (it’s big, really big).
But, there is two sides to this early morning rant: sure, pick the reputable, known quantities for your market data in your industry. That seems obvious, but you also end up being in an echo chamber because,mgiven that the analysts are all authentic and capable, they follow the same channels and people through the industry, so they will create very similar data – maybe a 5% difference, up or down, here and there – and that can make you doubt the end result. After all, who wants to go where everyone else is going?.
It’s an unenviable situation for the analysts, and in light of the uncertainties facing the display market these days, it puts most in a bind because they can’t really go negative – I can do that for them – and they can’t really tell any client that the real reason the market is facing hardship is because of the client’s strategies – what do you know? I can do that, too.
I am not going to open up a GoFundMe page for a care home for aging analysts, and I am not sure they are well served by running naked through the industry shouting the sky is falling. Those seem to be the only two choices facing aging analysts in this cruel world.
However, I will light one of those Dollar Store LED candles for them, probably have to use cheap Dollar Store batteries, too, but they will know that for that brief twenty or thirty minutes that the batteries last, I will be thinking about the thankless task facing the brave men and women of the industrial analyst world (I made that up because these poor souls don’t even have their own club or association), especially the display analysts.
In the meantime, I can fight against the deluge of research reports generated in what I can only imagine is a hellish market research sweatshop where someone actually looks up display industry keywords and thinks, I wonder how many LPTS market reports I can sell this week, picks a couple of starving unemployed grads out of a cell, puts them on the internet, and cracks the whip.
The Market Research Mill
Here’s a very, very small sample of LinkedIn posts on the size of the display market in the last 24 hours:
