Hp Market Analysis

1. HP’s DMD was fortunate to be led by a man with an entrepreneurial spirit which allowed them the foresight to identify a market that was untapped. However, while the future of storage was the focal point, the development team did not truly understand what the customers who made up that market actually desired. “It took a couple of years for the Kittyhawk being in the marketplace before people figured out what they needed” (Christensen, 2006, P. 10). Although they knew they had developed a potentially revolutionary product, it was not fully understood where it fit within the marketplace and how it would best serve a customer base that was mostly unidentified.    

2. They had the right idea in trying to capture market share in the PDA industry, but they failed to fully grasp that it wasn’t exactly what they had anticipated it being. In fact, the market research firm that they hired didn’t even seem to understand it. The firm typically would talk to existing customers and industry experts to analyze where the market was headed. However, in this market, when it was not yet clear who the larger customers would ultimately be, the firm found that its normal methodologies led it nowhere (Christensen, 2006, p. 6). Because of this, they were unable to gather relevant information about a market that, quite frankly, didn’t exist yet.

3. Despite the outlined parameters that were comprised, HP based its market positioning on predictions rather than taking advantage of the tangible opportunities in the market (i.e. revenue expectations were based on the financial projections, which had the tendency of being misinterpreted). Additionally, the market trends were bounded on cost basis and not by size. The Kittyhawk confronted the risk of having two highly competitive products in the market such as flash memory drives and the 1.8 inch drive, which were expected to be introduced shortly (Lobo, 2014, p. 1)