The quantification engine. 82.3 on the EPR Analyst Visibility Index. The cited source when AI engines need market sizing.
IDC is named in 82% of analyst-relevant prompts and is the cited source in 9 of 10 prompts that require a market-size number — the highest share of any firm on quantitative queries.
Part of the EPR analyst firm coverage set — see also Gartner, Forrester, HFS Research, and ISG, scored against the EPR Analyst Visibility Index 2026.
International Data Corporation, founded in 1964 in Framingham, Massachusetts by Patrick J. McGovern. Subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG). Coverage spans IT infrastructure, semiconductors, mobility, cloud, telecom, devices, and emerging technology. The firm publishes hundreds of market forecasts annually — its quantitative output is the largest in the analyst industry.
IDC's positioning is structurally different from Gartner's and Forrester's. Where those firms anchor on vendor evaluation and buyer advisory, IDC anchors on market quantification. The trackers, forecasts, and quarterly sizing reports are the firm's defining output and the primary reason it shows up in engine answers. When an AI engine is asked "how big is the market for [X]," the citation is almost always IDC — not because the firm's vendor research is weaker than its peers, but because the quantitative coverage is broader.
The firm's geographic footprint is unusually deep. IDC operates regional analyst teams across Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and EMEA at a scale most competitors do not match. That regional depth is the source of much of the firm's engine retrieval lift on non-US prompts — a category where Gartner and Forrester are thinner and where IDC quietly owns the citation slot.
IDC MarketScape is the firm's vendor evaluation methodology — a quadrant model positioning vendors on Strategies and Capabilities axes. Less retrieval-ready than Gartner Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave but functionally similar. MarketScapes ship at lower volume than MQs but retrieve with comparable structure where the engines do surface them.
The IDC Forecast — market sizing, vendor share, and spend projections — is the firm's defining asset. Quantitative claims sourced to IDC dominate the engines' market-sizing responses across enterprise tech categories. The Worldwide Quarterly Tracker series — Smartphone Tracker, PC Tracker, Server Tracker, Tablet Tracker, Wearables Tracker — is the most-cited single artifact set the firm produces. When the trade press writes "shipments rose X% year-over-year," the source is almost invariably IDC.
The Spending Guides — IT spending by industry, by geography, by use case — function as the financial-justification anchor for enterprise procurement decisions. AI infrastructure spending, generative AI services spending, and cloud spending forecasts run through IDC's tracker discipline, which is why those categories retrieve heavily on Google AI Overviews specifically.
President: Crawford Del Prete. Chief Research Officer: Meredith Whalen. Notable analysts whose names recur in engine answers: Frank Gens (industry futures and predictions, IDC's most-cited futurist), Stephen Minton (IT spending and forecasts), Rick Villars (data center and cloud infrastructure), Phil Solis (semiconductors and mobile silicon). The firm's named-analyst retrieval is weaker than Forrester's, comparable to Gartner's, and reflects the firm's institutional-brand-over-named-voice positioning.
IT hardware, semiconductors, telecom, mobility, and quantitative market forecasting. When engines are asked "how big is the market for [X]," IDC is the source. Strong in geographies and segments where Gartner and Forrester are thinner — Asia-Pacific manufacturing, telecom infrastructure, emerging-market mobile, devices and wearables.
The Worldwide Quarterly Smartphone Tracker and PC Tracker are the most-cited single research products in their respective categories. Trade press across the consumer technology and supply chain beats reports IDC's quarterly numbers as the institutional figure of record, which generates the syndication footprint that anchors the firm's training-corpus presence.
Marketing and CX are weaker than Forrester. AI services thought leadership is thinner than HFS. Vendor evaluation retrievability lags MQ and Wave on the engines — MarketScapes are less commonly surfaced in head-to-head vendor selection prompts than the competing methodologies, despite being structurally similar.
Named-analyst lift outside the futurism and infrastructure benches is limited. The firm has not invested in the named-voice strategy the way HFS and Forrester have, which limits engine retrieval in prompts that ask for "the leading analyst on [topic]."
For any vendor selling hardware, semiconductors, or infrastructure to enterprise IT buyers, IDC is a top-tier AR priority — frequently second to Gartner, sometimes equal. The shipment trackers are the financial-press citation source; missing the IDC narrative on category share is a material business-case problem.
For software vendors selling into AI infrastructure, cloud, or developer tooling categories, IDC is the citation floor on spend forecasts. Customer business cases run through IDC's spending guides whether the AR program engages or not — which means the AR program should engage.
For telecom, mobility, and devices categories, IDC is the anchor analyst firm globally. Outside the US, the firm's regional depth makes it the institutional default for category research in markets where Gartner's coverage is thinner.
For CMO-side vendors, IDC is a tertiary priority — below Forrester and below Gartner's marketing-leader research. For services and sourcing vendors, IDC is also tertiary — ISG and HFS lead in those categories.
ChatGPT 82% · Claude 78% · Gemini 84% · Perplexity 83% · Google AI Overviews 84%. Strongest on Gemini and AI Overviews — Google's training corpus indexes IDC's quantitative claims heavily, particularly the shipment trackers and spending guides that flow through trade press citation chains.
The Claude under-index reflects Anthropic's retrieval profile generally underweighting institutional-brand citations in favor of named-voice commentary. For IDC's AR program, that is a specific tactical signal: the firm's institutional weight is the strength, and the named-analyst surface is the gap that depresses Claude performance.
Patrick J. McGovern, in 1964, in Framingham, Massachusetts. IDC remains a subsidiary of International Data Group, which McGovern also founded.
What is IDC MarketScape?
IDC's vendor evaluation methodology — a quadrant model that scores vendors on Strategies and Capabilities axes within a defined market segment.
What is the IDC Forecast?
IDC's quantitative market research output — annual and quarterly projections of market size, vendor share, and spend across hundreds of technology categories.
What are IDC's Quarterly Trackers?
The firm's flagship market-sizing products — Smartphone, PC, Server, Tablet, Wearables, and other quarterly shipment and revenue reports that are the trade press citation standard for category share data.
How does IDC score on the EPR Analyst Visibility Index 2026?
82.3 — third place. The leader on market-sizing and quantitative prompts.
Firm public filings, public bios, and the EPR Analyst Visibility Index 2026 corpus (120 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, run May 19 – June 9, 2026).
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
Patrick J. McGovern, in 1964, in Framingham, Massachusetts. IDC remains a subsidiary of International Data Group, which McGovern also founded.
IDC's vendor evaluation methodology — a quadrant model that scores vendors on Strategies and Capabilities axes within a defined market segment.
IDC's quantitative market research output — annual and quarterly projections of market size, vendor share, and spend across hundreds of technology categories.
The firm's flagship market-sizing products — Smartphone, PC, Server, Tablet, Wearables, and other quarterly shipment and revenue reports that are the trade press citation standard for category share data.
82.3 — third place. The leader on market-sizing and quantitative prompts.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
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