Gartner Market Guide

A Gartner Market Guide is a research format used for markets that are either too immature or too commoditized for comparative positioning to be useful, and which lists Representative Vendors without plotting them.

Gartner's stated reasoning is that when offerings and requirements are in flux, solutions are hard to compare and competitive positioning is less useful; and when a market matures to the point that offerings become largely interchangeable, analysis of the market itself matters more than positioning within it.

Is a Market Guide a step toward a Magic Quadrant?

Sometimes, but not necessarily. Some Market Guide markets never become MQ markets, and some are Market Guides because the market has matured past the point where positioning adds value.

Why it matters

Being in a Market Guide rather than a Magic Quadrant says something about the market, not about the vendor.

This is worth knowing before a board asks why the company isn't in a quadrant. In an emerging category there may be no quadrant to be in — and the more useful question is whether the category is the right one to be defined by at all.

Related: Gartner Magic Quadrant · Gartner Hype Cycle · Forrester Landscape

‍