TrendIQ - A New Way to Look at the IP Market

Got something here that VoIP watchers should find interesting - maybe even fascinating.

I've started developing some ties to a company called TrendIQ, and wanted to share what they're doing. They provide an interesting form of market intelligence, as it's based solely on information gathered on the Internet using proprietary software. On one level, it's a bit like a search engine, but they've customized their data gathering so as to focus on variables that reflect things like what they call "market sentiment". It's not really primary research, but it's more sophisticated than secondary research.

This may not catch your eye right away, but it's intuitively appealing to me. I say this because I suspect the vast majority of people reading my blog do not come from a marketing research background. I've got 20 years experience in this world, and I haven't come across too many people who know the VoIP space and have this in their background. In that regard, I'm probably an anomaly, but that's fine by me.

Incredibly, during my years as an in-house analyst at Frost & Sullivan I didn't come across one telecom analyst who had real world market research experience, which to this day astounds me. If I learned one thing during that time, it's that analysts come from all walks of life. I digress...

So, that brings us to TrendIQ. They've developed some pretty impressive software tracking tools that aggregate a whole lot of Internet-based information about companies. What I'm about to show you is a summary chart they call the VoIP Sentiment Analysis:





What really jumps out here is how strong the sentiment is for Sun Rocket. There is a consistent methodology for compiling these numbers across 52 VoIP providers, and I can't really explain why their rating is so high. In that regard, TrendIQ may raise as many questions as they do answers, but I think it can be a very good tool, especially for leading indicators.

Their methodology is too complex to analyze here, but suffice to say, there is an awful lot of data behind the numbers, and their full reports provide an almost endless series of breakouts by provider, as well as other attributes.

For now, you can access the full data set for free once you register at their site. They will be moving soon to a subscription model, so if you want to play around with this, I suggest you do so sooner than later.

I'm in the process of getting my own website ready to launch, and once it's done, you'll be able to link up to TrendIQ from there. Their CEO, Paul Feldman, and I are exploring ways of working together, and adding more insight to the data so it's more manageable for end users. Paul has also got similar tracking studies going in WiMax and IMS, and you'll soon be hearing about some joint initiatives in these areas as well.

Until then, I hope you find this data of interest, and would love to hear your thoughts.