It’s very difficult to find reliable market information about desktop 3D printing. Every day, there are new stories, and some are more similar to each other than others. It’s hard to tell what company is doing well, and it’s even more challenging to figure out how well different segments of the market are doing. On top of that, information about 3D printing is often cloaked in hype. Hype can mean that people are genuinely excited, which is one thing, but it can also mean that new businesses may make lazy efforts, disguising existing technology in new marketing packages, only trying to cash in on the emerging technological trend.
If there were a monthly service that actually cut away the hype and tracked market and technological data, people would start getting the idea that it might be worth investing in the 3D printing industry in some way. Maybe you have a small company with a limited budget, and you need to understand the complexities of the market with more depth to make smart investment choices. Maybe you are investing in 3D printing stocks, and you need to know how well companies are actually doing aside from the press release news cycle.
For this reason, SmarTech Markets Publishing has launched their 3D Printing Advisory Service, which includes “a monthly industry analysis package providing accurate market data, in-depth analysis and penetrating commentary for insiders in the burgeoning personal 3D printing (P3DP) sector.” While considering the service, SmarTech has released a free CES issue, so that you can check it out for yourself.
The content of the monthly service is split into three sections: hardware, materials and markets. And SmarTech describes the service as offering the following features:
1.) Identifies the most profitable market niches.
2.) Offers insight into company strategies and market shares.
3.) Deepens understanding about how personal 3D printers will evolve in terms of performance, features and materials support.
4.) Compares and contrast pricing and supply chain strategies
5.) Helps evaluate the commercial importance of legal and intellectual property issues.
I like the idea of this report because it tries to answer a question that has been on a lot of minds: How do you sort through the non-stop information blasts touting new and better 3D printers, materials, and software? It’s hard to understand and predict which companies will make money based on their new products. Or as SmarTech puts it: “Faced with the need to discern the P3DP wheat from the chaff our perceptive industry analysis can guide market players to the most profitable trends in personal 3D printing.”
After looking at the free sample, I can see that they are trying to help interested parties make the best decisions, when it comes to understanding which intellectual property is going to make the biggest impact in the personal 3D printing space. The free report does so by analyzing different IP litigation, tracking and separating important innovations from hype saturated claims, analyzing pricing and distribution strategies, and predicting who is going to make it and who will bite the dust in the coming years.
In other words, it may provide a reality check for the 3D printing industry.
