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How to determine future market size?

I am wondering is it is possible to determine (predict) the size of a market in the future?

I have calculated the current market size of my app idea, but I wish to predict the size of the market in the near future to ensure the survival of my application.

I understand market growth is a metric that can predict which direction a market is going towards, but I want to estimate the total volume of the market in the near future. Is it possible?

Answer 9003

What you could do is find total market research and then offer a growth model for your specific app’s market share. This can be fairly subjective, but this is always the case with “predictive” models.

Consider modifying your original question, to be more detailed. Without more information regarding the specific content of the app, its difficult to give a more specific answer.

Answer 9007

I am wondering is it is possible to determine (predict) the size of a market in the future?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.

Regular markets can be easily estimated, as their growth rate would remain constant unless and until there is a really revolutionary product, or until a competing market segment enters the race, which is very rare.

So, the market volume directly dependent(correlated) to the market growth. So, if a market is growing at 3% per quarter, then you can assume the same increase in volume.

And you can divide the volume accordingly in case of a non-competitive market. In most cases you can't calculate your share. So, you can assume the same growth rate on your MRR(if SaaS) and revenue.

However, the markets of emerging technologies are very unpredictable, even after careful market research (consider the case of Google Glass). So maybe, you can't estimate the market volume even if you know the current growth rate.

It can both expand exponentially, or shrink dramatically. Thus, such markets are highly stochastic.


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