Chapter 13 - Data Communications: Adaptation 1979-1986
13.16 Samples of Experts' Opinions
By 1984, experts eagerly wrote about a rapidly emerging T-1 multiplexer market and, by early 1987, they seemingly had pronounced the winners and declared the market foreclosed to new entrants. The following excerpts from a random sampling of reports from two of the most respected market research firms - the Yankee Group and Datapro Research - and two leading investment banks covering communication technologies - Alex. Brown & Sons, and Salomon Brothers – document this passage. The executives of all the firms in this history not only had access to this information, they were often readily providing interviews and data. Even so, the uncertainty of whether one was reading fact or fiction, hopeful dreams or futures already decided, made building a company’s strategy on the views of experts very risky.