Ayers Island, Maine. November 5, 2004. If the weather forecast calls for a warm sunny day tomorrow, and you intend to go off to work in the morning dressed accordingly, how are you likely to feel when you awaken to dark clouds and a steady drizzle? Fortunately, for most places on the planet this does not happen very often, and weather forecasts on critical dimensions of measurement tend to be about 80% accurate. If weather forecasts were not so accurate, imagine how you might prepare for weather-related contingencies.

So, when it comes to high technology, why do so many of us seem to be duped by the steady hype of notoriously bad forecasts? CCG Group has looked at the forecasts of a number of well-known technology market and investment research organizations and finds that, depending on the information source, forecasts of Wi-Fi use at public access points, or hotspots, were wrong by 20%-200% for the year 2003 and continue to be wrong by wide margins three or four years after the first instances of Wi-Fi commercialization.

There has been some back-pedaling. For example, this week IDC issued a report documenting the reluctance of European businesses to use hotspots. According to Jiwire, as of October 21, 2004, there are 58,580 hotspots at 43,584 locations in 78 countries, and the three cities with the most locations are London (943), New York (723), and Paris (692). Taking these two ‘facts’ together, it may seem odd that the Wi-Fi build-out in Europe is so prominent. What could possibly justify the investment industry players are making in building out the Wi-Fi infrastructure when there is so little demand?

Using its rich benefit segmentation of the enterprise market for mobility, CCG Group visited over 120 Wi-Fi locations in the U.S. and Europe and assessed the performance of hotspots in serving different demands. The results of the analysis are presented in a report, just released, “Assessing the State of the Wi-Fi Market: venue deployment performance” The report documents eight critical mistakes that Wi-Fi vendors and their venue partners are making, and it explains in direct terms how they can correct the mistakes.

“Part of the problem with Wi-Fi not meeting its market potential stems from the simple fact that the product the technology companies are selling is not the product the users think they are buying” explains David Gautschi, Director of Research for CCG Group. “To make matters worse, no single player delivers a complete solution to any segment in the market. Hence, a lot of so-called partners have false expectations of each other, and this produces serious execution mistakes. Maybe those forecasts of the research organizations were a little wild, but the commercialization programs have been too. There is not a lot that any of us can do about the weather when the forecast is wrong. But when it comes to marketing technology, there is plenty that one can do to make the forecast ‘right’.”