Pain is half of the story. The other half is the market: who already serves these users, how crowded it is, and what has changed lately. These sections sit in the "Is it real?" act, and each one only appears when TrendGap has data for it.
Incumbents
Incumbents are the products already on the market. "Incumbents" lists the apps, plugins, add-ons and sites people use for this job today, with their measured data. It can hold up to four parts:
- The app table, with "App", "Rating", the rating trend over recent weeks, "Last update" and "Complaints in our data". Each app's name links to its store page.
- "Store listings" from other stores and directories, with "Rating", "Installs" and "Last update" where the store gives them.
- "Websites", with estimated "Organic visits" and the site's place in "Top websites" lists.
- "Also suggested": products that AI suggested and TrendGap found in the store, but has not measured yet.
Under each app you see how it got there: "Matched by App Store search", "Checked by TrendGap", or "Suggested by AI, verified on the App Store" with a date. A note above the table says when the store data was last measured, and a figure that has not been measured reads "Not measured yet", never zero.
When Watch is available, you can watch an app from its row. When Market Radar is available, a "Company profile" link opens more about it. See Market Radar. An older report may also have a "Competitors named by AI" section: names from the first version of the report, not checked by a store lookup.
Room to win
"Room to win" counts how crowded the space is. It reads app store searches for the idea's search term and Google results for its keywords:
- Apps with many ratings in the top results of each store.
- Strong apps among them: a high rating with many ratings.
- Sites that rank well in Google for the idea's keywords.
When the Gap Score has a Room to win part, a label sums it up: "Wide open", "Contested" or "Crowded". The rule behind the label is printed under the block, with the date of the count. The "Apps in this space" tile in the key numbers is the first of these counts.
Why now
"Why now" lists only changes TrendGap measured, with their dates. It never forecasts. An item can be:
- Searches for the idea's keywords growing compared with a year earlier.
- A tracked app's App Store rating falling.
- The store count of apps, or of strong apps, changing between two counts.
- More complaints in recent weeks than in the weeks before.
Open "How Why now is built" under the block for the exact rule behind each kind of item.
Willingness to pay and market size
When Validate is in your menu, two more sections can appear. Paid plans see their figures; Free sees which plan includes them. Neither one uses AI or costs credits.
- "Willingness to pay" grades four signals from stored data: "Paid incumbents", "Buyer-intent cost per click", "Complaints from paying users" and "Advertisers on the search results". Each signal shows the rule it is graded by, and an "Overall" level appears when enough signals have data.
- "Market size" estimates the market from numbers TrendGap measured and a few assumptions. It shows three figures: TAM (everyone in the category paying for a year), SAM (the part your product can serve) and SOM (a year of customers you could win from search).
- Every input of "Market size" shows where it comes from. Type your own value to replace one: the estimate updates as you type, and your edits are not saved. "Reset all" brings back the stored values.
Recent launches and Compare
When Market Radar is available, "Recent launches in this space" lists new launches whose names match the idea's keywords: posts in developer communities, new code repositories with a site of their own, and new app chart entries. It is part of the paid plans.
When Validate is available, "Compare" in the row under the report head puts this idea side by side with other ideas or with one of your evaluated ideas. Compare is part of the paid plans. See Check your own idea.