Monthly Archives: May 2021

Nokia’s Dual Channel 5G Infrastructure Solutions for India’s Wireless Internet Growth

Automobile Industry, , ,

Finland’s Export Opportunities: Nokia’s 5g Network Equipment Fills the Infrastructure Needs of India

A Case Study in Global Entrepreneurship

University of South Florida

Dr. Diana Hechavarria

Todd Benschneider

Nicole Jordan

Eric Kopelovich

Paola Peralta

Christopher Preleski

Kannan Sunharavaradhan

05/01/2021

Nokia Telecom Technology, an Intrapreneurial Opportunity for Finland’s Largest Exporter

The Company: Nokia

Our research team examined the strengths and resources of the country of Finland to identify a company and its product that could be most competitive as an export to untapped markets. We chose to focus on Finland’s largest and most experienced export company, Nokia. The company has been evolving through an identity crisis, recently restructuring, selling off its retail focused mobile phone and computer divisions to bet the company and the country’s future on building 5g network broadcast hardware (NAIC 3344113, SIC 36740200) for the telecom industry. By both thinking and acting globally over the past two years, Nokia managed to identify that its true competitive advantages lie in business-to-business relationships, growing into an electronics supplier to nearly all the cellular networks in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Despite unexpected success entering the highly competitive western markets, its competitors from Huawei and Samsung leveraged their ability to extend credit to their commercial partners and were able to dominate the emerging markets in mainland Asia, India, and Africa. We believe that the timing is ideal for Nokia’s 5g MIMO antenna team reopen contract negotiations with Indian utilities to win the region for Nokia from Huawei. India’s 5G network rollout plan was derailed by political opposition to its Chinese supplier Huawei and alternative solutions were delayed since 2020 by the lockdowns from the COVID outbreak.

The Market Opportunity: India

India’s is one of few remaining semi-developed countries where less than half the population has access to the internet. This is due to India’s sprawling and sparsely populated rural population that live in remote rural villages where it has not been economically feasible to connect the villages through fiber optic land lines. Indian officials believed the areas could be best served through cellular or satellite broadband as the technology evolved; therefore, a massive cable laying initiative was never created. Even after wireless technology could reach the remote areas, many Indian telecom providers delayed building out LTE networks; instead, choosing to wait for the arrival of the higher capacity 5g broadcast hardware in development. 5g hardware’s arrival was several years later than expected, leaving many unconnected rural children at a disadvantage in education. As 5g standards were established, wealthier cities and states in the US and EU bought the first available broadcast equipment, leaving India with an uncertain supply date. Once COVID disrupted international travel, the pace of 5g deployment slowed while demand increased from countries that had better access to 5G hardware suppliers. Compounding the supply and demand imbalance were two new factors. The first complication was possible additional restrictions that may prevent the deployment of the cellular network equipment from Huawei when it arrives. The second complication was that global demand for electronics equipment had grown so much during the COVID lockdowns, that chip makers would be delaying future delivery dates on new orders, leaving India without the equipment they needed for possibly several additional years.

The Product: Nokia’s Dual Network Connectivity Hardware (Patent US1053691782 granted 01/14/2020)

Nokia realized in 2014 that many of its cellular network clients were delaying equipment purchases, reluctant to invest in LTE hardware when 5G was expected to be available within months. Nokia engineers understood that while the broadcast hardware was ready to deploy 5G, the international communications standards remained undecided. The consensus on software languages, frequency parameters and coverage density would take several years to establish, delaying the rollout by nearly half a decade later than expected. Nokia executives determined that they needed a hybrid hardware that could broadcast the current LTE standard and later be reprogrammed to broadcast the higher performance 5G signal. This multi frequency hardware would allow Nokia to generate sales revenue in regions that were still building out coverage without rendering the equipment obsolete after 5G standards were deployed. A series of cellular broadcast antennas were developed using a dual frequency connectivity software that would allow the LTE hardware to later broadcast 5G with a simple software update. Nokia applied for a patent on the design in February of 2015, which was later granted in January of 2021. This technology allowed Nokia to convert their antenna hardware prior to the launch of the 5G broadcast standards. The hybrid solution later proved more beneficial than expected since it allowed Nokia to pre-order large quantities of the 5g hybrid semi-conductors which later gave the company an edge over cellular hardware competitors when the semiconductor supply chain was overwhelmed in early 2021, limiting available inventory to Ericsson and Qualcomm.

Nokia’s Competitive Advantages in India

During our research we learned that Indian politicians are sensitive to any appearance of being subservient to western government leaders; therefore, Nokia’s political neutrality, non-threatening size, collaborative culture, and English language fluency could be a better fit for the Indian market than other hardware suppliers from Sweden and the United States. India is also the best choice for Nokia to focus on, of the many emerging market countries, since India has established sources of credit from western banks that its national telecom utilities can draw on to fund the multibillion-dollar 5g network contracts. Nokia is often at a disadvantage in emerging market economies since Finland’s limited economic size inhibits its ability to provide the credit terms in the size needed by the larger countries in Africa and South America. Another advantage for Nokia to focus on the Indian market is that its government prefers a collaborative supply relationship where Nokia would provide the hardware and training for India to retain control over its own existing telecoms to implement and support in the equipment in the future. Nokia’s culture and language provided a smoother transition into India’s supply requirements than from Nokia’s remaining competitors at Ericsson, Samsung or Qualcomm. The greatest factor for success has only recently been revealed, that only Nokia and Samsung have adequate reserves of the 5g semiconductors needed to service a country the size of India through 2022. We believe that since Samsung is likely to be at full capacity taking over Huawei’s contracts in Africa and South America, we assume that the company will be less aggressive at underpricing Nokia in the 5g battle for India.

Nokia’s Cultural Fit in India

Our confidence in Nokia’s 5g hardware’s deployment success lies in the cultural features of Finnish companies and its country’s flexible trades policies. Finland is a country approximately the size of Florida and Georgia combined, sparsely populated with only of 5.5 million residents, situated between the Sweden and Russia. Its non-threatening size is an advantage in gaining the cooperation of foreign governments that have been reluctant to see their citizen’s export spending further enrich the US and China superpowers. Finland has enjoyed generations of success in global exports, the country’s prosperous export dependent economy was initially created on wood and paper products until the late 1900’s, later developing a metals industry from its vast mineral reserves and leveraged those specialty metals to position itself more recently as a wire and electronics hardware exporter.

Its largest corporation, Nokia has been the leader in Finland’s exports since the company’s founding in the mid 1800’s, beginning as a paper pulp producer, evolving into to rubber products, later to metal cables and in the past 30 years finding its global niche after pivoting into electronics hardware. Throughout its 160-year history, Nokia has managed to think and act globally, repeatedly reinventing itself to create products with global appeal that transform Finland’s natural resources into export profits that the country depends on. Much of Nokia’s repeated successes in global markets can be credited to a culture uniquely suited for successful cross border business relationships. The collaborative Finnish culture, its engineering expertise and its politically neutral history have enabled the small population to grow from a period of poverty and starvation in the early 19th century, into the world’s 16th highest GDP nation, ranking ahead of Hong Kong, Germany, and Canada. Nokia’s exports alone, at times, have provided nearly 5% of the country’s total GDP.

For Nokia, its export success can be traced to its harmonious culture. Among its own citizens, the Finns are exceptionally collaborative from the earliest preschool learning to its college sports strategies, the culture has an extraordinary focus on teamwork and fair play. In business, Finland’s own companies avoid domestic competition, believing that it dilutes profits for all, rarely entering business lines that other Finnish companies already produce. However, when competing globally for exports, the culture is surprisingly nationalistic, some critics even describe its international business tactics as ruthless, especially where it competes against the more widely recognized telecommunications pioneer Ericsson, its Swedish neighbor to the west.

The multinational success of the Finn’s export products, especially their technical inventions are a source of great national pride. The collaborative culture inside its borders extends beyond businesses, teamwork is ingrained throughout the culture, the Finns discourage competition among themselves in other aspects of society as well. For example, schools’ systems do not give standardized tests until age 16, fearing that a low ranking on the tests might undermine individual self-confidence and might prevent a child from finding where their underlying talents might be found. In addition, teachers rarely assign or grade homework until the 8th grade, and if graded, the comparative scores on the assignments are not typically shared with the students, since they believe the practice discourages collaboration, expression, and harmony. This might help the Finns to be attuned to the subtle needs for the Asian cultures to “save face”.

Despite enjoying a remarkably light academic workload, the Finnish curriculum strategically prepares students for global thinking, with group science and building projects in addition to many years of coursework for multilinguistic fluency. It is the Finnish goal that each student master at least two additional languages before entering the workforce. Most students choose English for a secondary language since many Finnish employers like Nokia require English to be used for internal communications. The third most popular language is French which served an important role in Nokia’s outmaneuvering Samsung in a successful takeover of one of the world’s largest telecom network equipment manufacturers in 2016, the French cellular giant Alcatel-Lucent that later gave Nokia a competitive platform to enter the 5g network market.

Education in Finland is mostly tuition-free and encouraged for all ages, which has resulted in Nokia’s highly trained workforce that embraces knowledge work and lifetime learning. The educational system throughout encourages perceptions of equality and a flat social hierarchy also seen inside Nokia. For example, there are no “gifted student” or learning disability separation classes in its schools. The Finnish education system has strict rules against cognitive ability discrimination; for example, schools are prohibited from denying a student admission using a qualification system, such as a minimum test score or GPA, which limits the demand for private schools that might compete against the publicly funded schools. All elementary students are treated equally as having some types of “special needs” in individual areas, given extra time, and tutoring in areas that they struggle with, which are often the foreign language areas. Students with even severe learning disabilities are progressed through the grades alongside peers their own age in what they define as a “mixed abilities environment”. The mixed abilities equality is the nearly opposite to the educational philosophy of other developed countries and may provide Finland’s science and engineering programs with a competitive advantage at finding unorthodox solutions overlooked by companies in Asia and the United States. The mixed abilities culture might prove especially beneficial in industries needing solutions at the intersection between hardware and software engineering. Software researchers have published several studies about exceptional software developers finding their exceptional programming talents after being misdiagnosed as “learning disabled” in elementary schools. The cultural support that Finnish children of all abilities receive, may reveal that there are many underutilized workers whose strongest language skill is found once they learn software coding.

Competition, even in school sports is not directly rewarded over collaboration; instead, the Finn’s promote team strategy, cooperation, and sportsmanship on their hockey and basketball teams over the resulting winning scores. The Finn nationalistic pride extends to its unique educational system where teaching is perceived as a prestigious career, so honored, that fewer than 10% of applicants for elementary school teaching positions are accepted. It is often claimed that Finland is the only country where it is easier to become a doctor than a teacher. Despite Finland’s unorthodox educational philosophy, its students score among the highest of any developed nation, especially in the sciences. This unusual educational experience creates a workforce that has excelled in the collaborative engineering environment that Nokia will need to produce complex networking software code products that are developed using a large team of engineer’s working simultaneously on large blocks of abstract computer code.

As a country with few military victories, little global economic prestige and notably lacking in global sporting team wins, the Finns instead reserve their competitive energies for outside its borders, celebrating Finnish victories over larger multinational competitors with an enthusiasm normally reserved for sports rivalries. Unlike the culture in Silicon Valley, Finn’s do not celebrate the individual successes of its tech entrepreneurs or corporate executives; instead, the Finn’s national exports are a team sport and belonging to the company that is on the winning team is its source of family pride. The annual global export revenue rankings are the scoreboard that defines career success in Finnish culture. Like a job at Goldman Sachs, Google, or Apple in the US, belonging to one of the companies that contributed to that country’s economic success is a source of honor and at times in Finland’s history, Nokia has been the prestige employer. So highly was the company’s regard in society, that in the years from 2010 to 2018, Nokia’s fall from dominance in cellular phones is felt by many as a humiliating defeat, causing many to question its culture’s strategies at competing in technology industries. However, this fall from dominance occurred during a period where Nokia appointed a Microsoft executive from Canada as their CEO, this abrupt change in corporate culture may have been poorly timed and in 2020, Nokia appointed a Finnish oil executive as the CEO to lead Nokia’s bet on telecom hardware.

Nokia’s Competitors and their Products

Today Nokia remains a global brand, mostly recognized for its inexpensive cellular phones that dominated the global phone market in early 2000’s. However, the company missed the move to smartphones and lost its global leadership to Apple and Samsung. Nokia recently downsized its workforce after its loss of cellular handset dominance and a failed smartphone alliance with Microsoft, struggling to find a new identity from 2012 to 2018. Nokia leadership saw its strengths suited to pivot away from retail products into cellular network infrastructure, and the company shed its consumer-focused retail divisions.

In 2019, revitalized and back the under new leadership from a native Finn CEO, Pekka Lundmark launched Nokia’s race against China’s Huawei, Korea’s Samsung, Sweden’s Ericsson, and the United States Qualcomm to be the first to build the broadcast antenna hardware for the upcoming 5g revolution in the telecom industry. With its sights focused on its Swedish neighbors at Ericsson, a company that was founded in 1876 as Europe’s first telephone maker. Ericsson invented Bluetooth wireless and the valuable 4G MIMO LTE design and has pioneered telecommunication technology for almost 150 years. Ericsson had a 27% market share of all the wireless telecommunications hardware in previous cellular networks, the largest of any non-Chinese company. As the rush for 5g evolved by 2018, Qualcomm and Ericsson had filed the most patents for 5g hardware with Samsung at a distant third and Huawei in fourth place. At the time of Nokia’s commitment to the 5g future, it was the 5th largest patent holder. However, by April of 2021, Nokia’s engineers have shocked the competition, announcing 3000 new 5g patent declarations and claiming the number one spot by a large margin as the largest portfolio of essential 5g patents. While critics may have suspected that many of these patent applications were trivial technologies patented as a marketing stunt to promote Nokia’s rankings; however, the 1st qtr. 2021 earnings report from Ericsson and Nokia showed that Nokia had grown its patent royalty income at Ericsson’s expense, also making gains in patent income at QUALCOMM’s loss as well. Nokia’s hardware revenue gained from careful planning in its supply chain from long standing relationships with Taiwan Semiconductor and a new relationship with Broadcom for access to chip inventories. It appears that once again the Finn’s have demonstrated their skills at not only strong collaborations with customers; but also building loyalty from its suppliers. That loyalty allowed Nokia to keep its hardware assembly lines moving when chip shortages stalled production at competitors Qualcomm and Ericsson.

Nokia’s rush to become the world’s supplier of 5g paid off late in 2019 when the US and EU banned import of the market leader Huawei’s network equipment citing national security concerns. Nokia became the only politically neutral supplier of network hardware that managed to be approved by all 4 telecom operators in the US, Korea, and Japan. The COVID 19 epidemic also benefitted Nokia, accelerating the global demand for 5g, and crippling its remaining competitors Ericsson and Qualcomm that were unable to deliver on 5g equipment orders due to shortages from semiconductor suppliers. Nokia’s status as the new global leader in 5g hardware was revealed as 1st qtr. 2021 earnings reports showed that Nokia had moved into the number one telecom hardware leader, taking large cellular hardware market shares as well from Huawei, Ericsson, and Qualcomm due to its access to large inventories of the scarce computer chips when its competitors sat on the sidelines waiting to be resupplied.

India’s Cellular Market Potential

Nokia’s growth outlook improved in 2019 as the competitive atmosphere in network hardware quickly evolved with recent regulatory surprises that have opened additional export opportunities for Nokia. The global telecom market was disrupted by political forces, as its largest supplier, the Chinese Huawei, was placed on the restricted supplier list in western countries. This restriction opened a lucrative opportunity for Nokia to benefit from the massive infrastructure spending in the countries that Nokia previously lost to Huawei. Political pressure from the United States and its European allies mounted, especially for trading partner India to eliminate Huawei’s hardware from its telecom networks. Fears, which many believe are unfounded, have spread that Chinese made equipment contained security breaches that allowed the Chinese government to eavesdrop on secure communications made across the networks. We saw an opportunity for Nokia to leverage the recent political discord against India’s current supplier and offer the Indian utilities an easy solution to resolve their Huawei supply relationship dilemma.

Due to limited wired internet access, India is the largest consumer of wireless data worldwide, the average wireless subscriber uses 11GB per month. In January 2021 there were 1.1 billion wireless subscribers among four wireless providers, Jio, Airtel, Vi and BSNL India ranks second for total telecommunication subscriptions. 70% of India’s population resides in rural areas but those residents only have 44% of the total wireless accounts, making rural markets the key to India’s growth. India’s ultra-broadband 5G wireless subscriptions are forecasted to surpass 350 million by 2026. 

Global 5g network infrastructure spending doubled in 2020 to $8.1 billion and has been growing at 10.4% the total wireless revenue. For example, in the United States, the typical family of four spends $1650 per year in wireless subscriptions, which requires the wireless providers to invest about $170 each year in capital infrastructure to support the data transfer needs for those subscriptions. Wi-Fi as a service, including, 3g, 4g, LTE and 5g is projected to grow at 19.8% CAGR from $3.4 billion in 2020 to $8.4 billion by 2025. India’s own broadband subscriber base has grown at 43.7% CAGR since 2015.

The Indian government launched a digital communications policy in 2018 aiming to provide broadband access to all by 2022. In 2020 India’s Department of Telecommunications allocated $9 billion toward assisting their private sector achieving its broadband objectives. Due to the unforeseen delays in acquiring 5G hardware, this goal will be delayed be delayed by several years. All the current events have snowballed into a great opportunity to match up Nokia’s strengths with India’s needs.

Market Entry Strategy

We believe that Nokia should approach the export opportunity with a think global-act global perspective. India’s telecom hardware services do not require a high degree of cultural adaptation to be accepted by wireless utility providers. We believe the most crucial customized cultural aspect will be how the sales contract team manages to handle the delicate public relations image issues that the Indian government leaders are facing as they appear to be pressured by the U.S. to cancel their previous purchase agreements with Chinese telecom hardware supplier Huawei. India’s officials may make a public display of resistance to the Nokia conversion or be overly critical of the deployment as a tactic to diffuse the moral obligations they feel to their contacts at Huawei.

We believe that focusing on Nokia’s dual channel technology differentiation as being a superior solution that is a better fit for India since COVID 19 disrupted the timeline for the government’s 5g frequency auctions, which were a prerequisite to its local telecom providers to begin placing orders for 5g broadcast antennas. Government officials can cite the need to buy 4g convertible antennas for immediate buildouts, with the details that they could not afford to buy Huawei’s 4g transmitters and later buy additional 5g hardware to replace the earlier purchased 4g antennas. Using that reasoning, the officials could assert that they were not bowing to U.S. political pressure by shutting out Huawei and ZTE, it was just a matter of a better solution being available that would make the best use of taxpayer funds.

We believe that pricing of Nokia’s equipment is less sensitive than it was pre-covid when Huawei’s won the initial equipment orders. With China no longer in the running, it is unlikely that Ericsson or any other small competitor would bid the contracts at low price points. Nokia is the only antenna provider that has adequate inventory to deploy the build-out by end of the 2021 fiscal year. With current price increases on future semiconductor orders, it can be assumed that all competitors will be bidding with a generous margin for price increases factored in.

Budget Allocations and Cash Flows

Profit Potential and Cash Flow Schedule

Risk Analysis

Sources

“Huawei Part of DoT Groups to Prep India’s 5G Roadmap.” Mint Dec 02 2020 ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

“Nokia Dives as 5G Rollout Costs Bite: Briefing.” Financial Times Oct 25 2019: 1. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

“Stock Review: Nokia (NOKIA:EUR3.39) Decreases.” Company Data Report May 19 2020 ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

mableannchang. “China’s Huawei, ZTE Set to be Shut Out of India’s 5G Trials.” China Economic Review Aug 14 2020ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Milne, Richard. “Nokia and Ericsson Remain Exposed in Geopolitical 5G Tussle: INSIDE BUSINESS EUROPE.” Financial Times Jul 02 2020: 7. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Mingas, Melanie. “India’s 5G Countdown Begins.” Capacity Magazine (2020) ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Ray, Tiernan. “For Ericsson and Nokia, 5G can’t Deploy Fast enough.” Barron’s Mar 05 2018: 23. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

“Huawei Part of DoT Groups to Prep India’s 5G Roadmap.” Mint Dec 02 2020 ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

“Nokia Dives as 5G Rollout Costs Bite: Briefing.” Financial Times Oct 25 2019: 1. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

“Stock Review: Nokia (NOKIA:EUR3.39) Decreases.” Company Data Report May 19 2020 ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

mableannchang. “China’s Huawei, ZTE Set to be Shut Out of India’s 5G Trials.” China Economic Review Aug 14 2020ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Milne, Richard. “Nokia and Ericsson Remain Exposed in Geopolitical 5G Tussle: INSIDE BUSINESS EUROPE.” Financial Times Jul 02 2020: 7. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Mingas, Melanie. “India’s 5G Countdown Begins.” Capacity Magazine (2020) ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

Ray, Tiernan. “For Ericsson and Nokia, 5G can’t Deploy Fast enough.” Barron’s Mar 05 2018: 23. ProQuest. 4 May 2021 .

NASA ZONE Training System: A Research Study in Monetizing Government Library of Patents for the Creation of Commercial Products – University of South Florida – Ali Alghamdi, Todd Benschneider, Ismael Diaz, Inaba Yasutoshi,

Automobile Industry

Research Study Analysis

May 1, 2021

Strategic Market Assessment

NASA ZONE Training:

  A Hardware Interface for Conditioning Athletes Mental Focus

Diagram Description automatically generated

US Patent: 9,283,468 (3/16/2016), US Patent 8,628,333 (1/14/2014)

Ali Alghamdi – Saudi Arabia

Todd Benschneider – United States

Ismael Diaz – Chile

Inaba Yasutoshi – Japan

University of South Florida

ENT 6186 Strategic Market Assessment

Dr. Lin Jiang

Appendix

NASA Brochure

Executive Summary

  1. Background
  2. Opportunity
  3. Product
  4. Market
  5. Situational Analysis
  6. Conclusions Recommendations
  7. Market Size
  8. Market Growth
  9. Market Segmentation
  10. Market Expansion
  11. SWOT Analysis
  12. Issue Analysis
  13. Competitors
  14. Competitive Analysis
  15. Economic – Market Environment
  16. Risks & Obstacles
  17. Options for Licensing
  18. Conclusions Recommendations
  19. Implementation Program Timeline

 Summary

In the late 1990’s two Nasa aerospace engineers Alan Pope and Lawrence Prinzel, experimented with alternate uses for training equipment that they developed for monitoring the brainwave activity in aerospace flight simulations. The team further developed the EEG monitoring interface to include biomechanical components for experiments and research in motion sickness with two gastrointestinal researchers from the University of North Carolina, Dr. Olfur Palsson and Dr. Marsha Turner. Applying the technology to their favorite hobby, as an offshoot of the motion sickness research, the team applied the technology to test a theory on how conditioning a golfer’s mental focus might measurably improve their golf scores. Together, the team built a biomechanical putting green where the size of the target hole varied in size dependent on the ability of the golfer to tune out external distractions and meditate into a deep focus on the putt.

The golfers mental state was monitored by electroencephalogram electrodes taped to the head along with skin conductivity sensors on the arms. These sensors interfaced with a desktop computer that used a software program they coded to detect a deeply focused mental state and gradually opened the putting hole further as the golfer’s concentration score improved. The inventors believed that by giving athletes a real time visual feedback to their concentration that the athlete could condition themselves to focus more quickly and more reliably, resulting in improved golf scores. The team then invited other golf enthusiasts to train on their putting green to test whether their equipment could help golfers improve their scores.

Early success at improving golfer’s performance led the inventors to believe that they could use their equipment and software to create concentration simulators for other sports, they designed a basketball free throw court, an archery target, a tennis court and lacrosse goal prototypes and were able to see improvements as each athlete practiced and gradually improved their scores. Since the system was a byproduct of NASA’s aerospace simulators, the patents were assigned to the United States government’s NASA department, with hopes to license the invention to private industry for royalties.

A- Background

In 2005, the NASA research team filed a patent for the putting green simulator, Patent No: 8,628,333 was granted in 2014. A patent on an improved version was filed in 2015, that included firearms and archery simulators and theoretical applications for lacrosse, basketball, football, baseball and tennis, in 2016 Patent 9,283,468 was granted. Since the inventions were developed in its government funded labs, NASA owned exclusive rights to the inventions and offered the technology to private industry for commercial licensing. So far NASA has not found a partner to further develop and market the invention.

Our global team of graduate research students at University of South Florida is assessing the market feasibility and looking at potential technology partners that might be well suited to license and manufacture a consumer product around the patents. The team conducted searches for competing patents, collected related scientific research from the EDGAR database, performed financial feasibility from the sporting goods specific industry classification averages and combed through countless google searches for existing competitive products and potential alternate markets. Our findings are condensed into the following report.

ace Administration

B. Opportunity

NASA welcomes proposals for licensing partners that can monetize the invention. We concluded that the inventors are highly credible and as NASA government employees, the inventors should be an asset at overcoming any regulatory obstacles that may arise. The NASA affiliation can be viewed as beneficial in promoting the resulting brand as the product of high-tech research. It is expected that the licensing agreement will be negotiated at the lower end of the standard royalty scale at around 3% of gross merchandise sales. We view the royalty costs as a small price to pay for the ability to make the marketing claim that the product was developed in NASA laboratories. We do see ways that we could address the market opportunity without licensing the NASA patents, since a functional pivot of the final product eliminates much of the hardware named in the patent. We also see that there are coaching systems and yoga hardware on the market like our vision for a final product that managed to bypass the NASA design patents. We believe that the value of the NASA credibility justifies the royalty and gives us the opportunity to add the more complex features from their design later if we see a market opportunity. We plan to also recommend licensing to incorporate the MUSE cordless EEG headband, patent number: 10942568, or purchase the hardware and have it branded ZONE through a white label manufacturing agreement in our version of the ZONE system.

C. Product

The ZONE Training system is a collection of interactive hardware that communicates through a proprietary software interface to cause a sports goal simulator to physically respond to changes in the athlete’s emotional state.  The focus of the patent protection is on the hardware of the interactive goal simulator, since the sensory monitoring equipment is already patented by other medical device equipment makers, most of which the patents had already expired on. The first full prototype was created for the sport of golf, it features an EEG harness taped to the athlete’s head and a thermistor attached the athlete’s finger. The athlete stands on a putting green like a putt-putt golf format. The sensory leads attached to the athlete detect the level of focus achieved by the athlete and open the scoring hole size further as the golfer improves their concentration and closes the size of the hole as the golfer loses concentration. The inventors intend for this visual interaction to aid golfers in mastering their emotions and concentration during vital parts of the game, thereby improving their scores and winning a higher percentage of competitions and possibly increasing prize money earnings. The same design circuitry can be applied to other proposed sports such as football, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, archery and weapons training.

D. Market

We have classified the invention in the sporting goods category of NIC statistics; however, its nearest competitor, the muse is in wearable technology and its other competitor, the Fitbit wristband is categorized in “athletic wear” along with clothing and sneakers. We believe that the interactive sport goal disqualifies the NASA invention from athletic wear or wearable technology categories. For market value research purposes, we chose to classify the invention as wearable technology since our plans for the first product will be entirely wireless and will not integrate the interactive playing course of the design. This vision for the product would place the product in competition with other biofeedback monitoring sports wearables from Fitbit, Garmin, Withings, Polar and Wahoo. In the alternate, non-athletic, wearable technology category, the MUSE headband or the Apple and Samsung watches have included fitness activity and biofeedback, we have chosen to compare our benchmark against the broader “wearable technology” category since we intend to market our hardware as an accessory to the sports monitoring app features of major brand smart watches, which are quickly making the separate sports wearable category obsolete.

E. Situational Analysis

The NASA intellectual property was developed in the early 2000’s with the first patent applications registered in 2005. The challenge here is that this technology was created before an important and now key innovation in sports technology, the introduction of Nintendo Wii’s interactive gaming controllers in 2006. The Wii’s game controllers were later adapted to the Fitbit fitness tracker wristband in 2007. The utility and popularity of the athletic activity tracking wristbands resulted in the motion sensing and GPS features being integrated into most smart and fashion watches in addition to the dedicated athletic wearables like Fitbit. The Fitbit technology and intelligent adaptive software enables modern wearables to record and compare athletic movements like Tennis and golf swing movement for smoothness, running and cycling cadence, heartrate, distance, speed, blood oxygen saturation and watts of power the athlete produces. The original NASA invention would need to be redesigned to integrate these motion and GPS sensors into the software and analysis for the technology to be competitive in today’s consumer market.

Without motion and GPS sensing, the NASA invention has minimal commercial market appeal. However, if the NASA invention was redesigned to incorporate the newer technologies, we believe that the newer wristband – headband motion sensors could replace the sports course simulators. For example, the artificial putting green could be replaced by providing the concentration feedback signals during the actual sport at lower cost with greater improvements to athletic performance. We are uncertain at this time whether any of the existing patents would even apply to the revised system we are proposing. Once we design a prototype that incorporates the latest hardware on the market, we plan to compare whether any of the patented solutions in the original NASA patent would be applicable. We expect that we will find that we could patent our proposed version without infringing on the NASA patent; however, for the minimal 3% royalty cost we believe that the marketing value of the NASA reputation will justify licensing the original patent and benefit us in several ways through our business alliance with a federal government agency.

F. Conclusions & Recommendation

G. Market Size

The entire market for wearable technology was estimated to be worth $81 billion in 2019, growing at about 13% CAGR. In addition, the global fitness and sports app market was valued at $4.4 billion, which involves some of the market that we anticipate tapping into is growing at about 21% CAGR. In addition, the item will also take some revenue from the $148 million global biofeedback instrument market, which includes laboratory and medical research sensors, as we expect our implementation of existing consumer grade EEG headband, The MUSE, used in latest yoga accessories will be repurposed for light research use.  Altogether we could see an argument to be made that the total addressable market is a piece of a $85 billion combined market growing at a rate of well over 10%.

We believe that the maximum penetration that the ZONE system might achieve would be close to 3% of total wearable technology owners.  This would include the technology early adopters and the serious competitive athletes that are willing to experiment with new training tools. To achieve even the 3% market penetration, the ZONE must be capable of delivering real world results rather than hypothetical improvements on a vague “concentration scale”. At 3% market penetration the theoretical revenue potential would equate to about $2.5 billion. We believe a conservative estimate, if the device can deliver some measurable results is around $1.5 billion in revenue.

The entire market for wearable technology was estimated to be worth $81 billion in 2019. In addition, the global fitness and sports app market was valued at $4.4 billion, which involves some of the market that we anticipate tapping into. In addition, the item will also take some revenue from the $148 million global biofeedback instrument market, which includes laboratory and medical research sensors, as we expect our implementation of existing consumer grade EEG headband used in latest yoga accessories will be repurposed for light research use.  Altogether we could see an argument to be made that the total addressable market is a piece of a $85 billion combined market growing at a rate of well over 10%.

H. Market Growth

We believe the most important market growth statistic is from the wearable technology category that sold about $81 billion in 2020. The wearable technology market has been growing at around a 13% CAGR. Many users of wearable technology use the fitness features of smartwatches and wristbands. We are aiming at selling the ZONE training equipment as an accessory that expands the utility of these smartwatches and expect our sales growth to track approximately the same growth curve. The additional targeted market, the $4.4 billion mobile phone sports app is growing at about 21% CAGR. In addition to sports applications, we also see an opportunity to market the product to students in e-learning as an education development tool that interfaces through their phone directly. We see lucrative non-athletic markets in both e-learning and as a solution for behavioral control concerns, especially ADHD. We have chosen not to include those segments in our market growth projection until we can demonstrate the ZONE’s effectiveness for non-sports applications.

I. Market Segmentation

We believe initially that a modernized ZONE concept product will appeal to the sport, often referred to also as “the practice of” yoga, since focus on emotional control is the primary objective of the practice. The following market statistics were found on Statista.com and google results from other sources supported similar market data.  Around 29 million people practice yoga in the United States and about 300 million people participate globally. According to comparecamp.com, in the United States, the average yoga practitioner spends $90 per month on studio time, clothing and accessories. We believe that the ZONE equipment will appeal to those in yoga, since practitioners currently have few metrics to track their progress with. In addition, the sport has a higher percentage of younger, well-educated demographics that tend to be more interested in and comfortable with using the latest technology. We also see opportunities in other sports in the Unites States where a portion of the goal scoring effectiveness requires intense concentration such as golf (30 million golfers), basketball (26 million), tennis (18 million), baseball (15 million), archery-firearm shooting (12.4 million) and hockey (.5 million).

J. Market Expansion

We also plan to market the device to parents of children with learning disorders, in the United States, 4.5 million children are diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and about 1.3 million are considered to have an autism related learning disorder. We believe that the ZONE system may serve a higher social and economic purpose if redirected to childhood development than it initial prospects as automated sports coaching tool.  We also see opportunities to market the system to those being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. It is estimated that about 3% of adults suffer from PTSD globally, which would amount to more than 1 billion people. We think that ZONE conditioning might offer measurable benefit to this clinical population as well.

K. SWOT Analysis Patent & Product

In a SWOT analysis of the technology patents, we see more weakness than strength in the potential to monetize the original version. The main weakness is that the interactive playing course makes the product too complex and expensive to affordably reach a mass market. We anticipate that few consumers will be willing to purchase a training tool that takes up as much floorspace as a car and we doubt that the electro-mechanical functions can be designed for extended home use without regular service and repairs. We also see a weakness that in its original design, each sport requires its own bulky scoring simulator that will additionally limit retail consumer appeal.  However, its strength is the potential for being the pioneering first mover advantage of building sports equipment around biofeedback technology.

We see many threats to the patents defensibility once we revise the system to eliminate the simulator field and pivot to using the equipment while practicing the actual sport in the field. It appears what made the invention patentable was its unique sport simulator field, since the EEG and skin sensors are already patented by medical equipment manufacturers they are not included in the defensible patent. Interaxion, the parent company of the MUSE headband, also has defensible patents on cordless EEG and motion sensing headwear that will interfere with integrating the sensors into the ZONE patent. We also see a threat that the largest manufacturers of wearable technology, Apple and Samsung could easily design around our proposed revisions if we prove that there is a sizable market for EEG devices paired to smart watches and phones. The ability of both companies to design close competitors to the Fitbit activity trackers demonstrated the difficulty in defending patents on wearable technology.  We see a safer approach is to prove the technology can improve sports scores and prove that athletes will pay a profitable price to obtain the system, with a plan to be acquired by a larger tech firm like Apple or Google.

The market SWOT analysis suggests that its greatest strength is market timing. Last year’s pandemic created some new markets for home athletic equipment and an opening for products that allow athletes to practice their team sport while alone. The less technologically inclined consumers also made progress at becoming comfortable with the latest technology advancements as they learned the latest work from home software. We also see a market strength and opportunity that was uncovered by the success of the only similar technology on the market, the MUSE yoga headband that is aimed at yoga and relaxation uses. The success of the MUSE system is a strength that proves that a useful EEG headband that also includes body motion detection and heartrate can be profitably manufactured and distributed for under $200 per unit. We also see opportunity that the $100 billion wearable technology market is still very fragmented between the two large smart watch makers plus an additional dozen fitness wristbands and two suppliers of cordless EEG headbands and therefore could allow our quick penetration of the targeted market.

The market weaknesses facing the ZONE system in its original format are its cost, size and complexity that will reduce appeal to retail customers who need to assemble and maintain the sport simulator course themselves. A threat facing the ZONE’s ability to monetize the design at an affordable price is the saturation of the market of sellers of consumer behavioral data surplus to data brokers. In wearable technology, much of the profit potential lies in selling the user data to brokers who will mine the data for actionable marketing insights, this is how much of technology such as Fitbit, Facebook, Google, Spotify and Amazon originally profited, their insight into user behavior had great value to market researchers that often paid amounts as high as $10 per user per year for access to the historical user data, especially valuable if the data included geolocation of user movements. Anonymized user data that previously would have sold to data brokers for several dollars per user are now selling for fractions of a cent due to the abundance of other sellers and limited new uses for data brokers to find interested buyers. We also see a weakness in the limited adoption for hours of sports use since the simulator is not very beneficial to overall sport training; instead, in most sports it is aimed at small highly focused game events like the penalty shot, the putt or the serve for sports other than the shooting sports. It seems unlikely that the athlete will use the system for more than an hour a week and may quickly grow bored with it once large gains are no longer measurable. There may be greater adoption and repeated use if the target market is pivoted toward learning disorders and yoga.

L. Issue Analysis Regulatory Hurdles & Development Costs

In the PESTL analysis we see some regulatory obstacles in using body sensors that may require FDA approval. We believe that we can overcome the need for approval by purchasing or licensing pre-approved hardware to be white label branded with the ZONE logo. We envision potential regulatory obstacles if we plan to monetize the harvested anonymized data for resale, since new trends in consumer privacy are unpredictable. We see potential regulatory tailwinds if anti-trust lawmakers continue to pressure the Apple and Google app stores to be more friendly to technology competitors like the ZONE. We see social environmental tailwinds from the residual lifestyle changes after COVID, since people have become more comfortable interacting with technology through their mobile devices. We envision a future benefit from social pressures to reduce prescriptions to children to enhance acceptance for ZONE conditioning for childhood learning disorders.

M. Competitors

The nearest competitor on the market is the EEG headband the MUSE, original version was released in 2014. Current version the Muse 2 at $229 was released in 2018, incorporates heartrate, breathing rate, and body movement and provides audible feedback to the wearer through earphones.

 The MUSE charges an optional $20 per year for access to features of the app that provides an updating library of meditations. The MUSE S is a headband for sleeping that does not use the earphone feature but tracks sleep and dream activity and creates sleep quality scores. Since the Canadian company Interaxion is still private, we were not able to find out detailed revenue that the MUSE is generating; however, in 2019 it made the Deloitte Fast 500 list which requires a minimum revenue of $5 million. According to Dunn and Bradstreet and Pitchbook the Muse has raised over $29 million in VC funding, has 63 employees, at $5 million revenue in 2019 it would have sold around 20,000 headbands. First designed in 2003, we believe that the MUSE has enough of a first mover advantage that it is worth proposing a joint venture or licensing agreement. While the product is not well known in US fitness equipment yet, the MUSE has attracted several Hollywood celebrities like Ashton Kutchner as influencers and investors. Pro golfer Andrew Parr is also an investor and endorser for its use in his golf training, which shows that the NASA team had located a viable market potential. Muse is also using it in research at University of Toronto in self-control conditioning for use in additions treatment, which confirmed our theory that the greater market is medical home therapies.

We do believe that the Interaxion will be willing to license the headband or features of it may not be covered in its complete form that would allow us to patent around it.

N. Summary of Competitive Analysis

The abundance of wearable technology that has entered the market since 2015 demonstrates that consumers are interested in adding wearable accessories that connect to their phone to expand its utility, the most popular was the “step tracker” feature of the industry pioneer, Fitbit. Fitbit’s motion sensors serve as a pedometer that approximates the user’s level of physical activity and recommends that users try to achieve 10,000 steps per day of physical activity to control weight and improve circulation. The Fitbit also factored the user’s sex, age and weight to approximate how many calories the user burned each day, which helped users with their overall diet and exercise budgeting of calories.

 As technology and machine learning advanced, the activity wristbands could automatically correct for distance traveled, heart rates, blood oxygen saturation, sleep quality and auto detect exercise types. The accompanying phone app could then display these metrics on a dashboard and graph progress toward goals. Initially the user data from Fitbit was extremely valuable since it was able to map behavioral insights that no smartphone alone could detect, the accompanying diet food calorie library helped food marketers detect future eating social eating trends which gave some food supplies develop new products with greater success. That behavioral data is less valuable now than it was five years ago, and Fitbit’s popularity has diminished after the arrival of the Samsung and Apple watches with all the Fitbit features plus additional technology and a cleaner interface into the Apple or Android operating systems. Fitbit became highly unprofitable once there were other sources of user diet and exercise patterns, limiting its bargaining power with data brokers, its user data prices dropped, leaving the company with large annual operating losses. In 2019, Google offered to buy Fitbit to for access to its user history. The acquisition is pending regulatory anti-trust approval. Google has also made a bid to acquire the Canadian Muse EEG headband, but founders and investors announced that they intended to build the MUSE to a $500 million valuation before considering selling. Considering the competition in this market, we expect that our most profitable exit would be an acquisition by Google or Apple for the ZONE system to be integrated into their health and fitness tools.

In approximate 2019-unit smart technology wristband sales, Apple watch led the market with about $14 billion in sales, Samsung with $16 billion, Fitbit with $1.4 billion, Garmin at $1 billion and the remaining competitors together amounting to about $1.5 billion. Fitbit’s revenue peaked in 2016 at $2.1 billion and has dropped about 20% each year since which gives us some insight to how the ZONE might fare in the market if we fail to work and acquisition with a bigger tech company that is able to design around our IP protection. We expect that technology headbands will have less demographic penetration than the wristband found, especially with female consumers with longer hairstyles.

O. Economic & Market Environment: Purchasing Habits Regulatory Environment

As we enter summer of 2021, the US market demand for consumer goods is at an all-time high. The arrival of 5g signals created a super cycle of phone and smart watch upgrades as consumers became more dependent on their mobile technology during the pandemic. However, supply has been constrained due to shortages in the compact, energy efficient computer chips used in mobile phones and wristbands, resulting in premium prices for those models available. We have been unable to gather data on how the MUSE headband has fared in response to covid lifestyle disruptions; however, we estimate that its rate of adoption has accelerated as consumers have become more conscious about their health and focus on managing their stress levels during the many uncertainties of the pandemic year. We anticipate that FDA approvals for health and wellness technologies will get fast track approvals in the coming years, especially non-pharmaceutical solutions such as our EEG based devices.

P. Risks and Challenges: Domestic & International

We believe the greatest challenge at getting the ZONE training system to market is being able to license the MUSE headband hardware from Interaxion in Canada. After the company declined Googles acquisition proposal, we suspect that they have a broader market in mind for their headband outside of the current yoga use. The ZONE patent has little appeal if we cannot bring its hardware into the modern age of mobile wearable technology, and the fastest path to market would be a white label manufactured ZONE brand head band as our main point of user contact. We may be able to design our own wireless EEG headband around MUSE’s patents; however, we expect that development time would add at least two years to the plan, in which time we would anticipate that MUSE will agree to an acquisition by big tech leaving us with a second mover entry with limited brand recognition. We also expect to soon face lower margin solutions with a narrow moat of protection from other competition from inexpensive electronics makers in Taiwan and China.  Unless we can establish an eventual brand partnership with an international brand like Apple, Samsung, Fitbit or Garmin we will lack the established marketing and distribution channels to reach the international consumer markets as has been evident by the MUSE’s slow uptake into the global wearable markets.

Q. Options for Licensing and Commercialization

We expect that we will be able to negotiate a royalty rate of 3% or lower with NASA, since the patents have limited application considering development of motion sensing and repositioning wearables. If we find that our revisions to the ZONE system do not require the ZONE patents, we would be considering licensing the patents anyways since it would leave is the option of adding interactive playing courts to future products and marketing the ZONE as a NASA technology. We hope to be able to negotiate a royalty rate under 1% for the versions that do not use the Intractive sport simulator. We could agree to a higher royalty rate close to the max 6% rate on later version products that may incorporate the variable playing course.

R. Conclusions and Recommendations

Based on our research, we believe that the existing ZONE patents have little commercial value in today’s sports technology market. We do not believe institutional buyers such as universities, country clubs, professional sports teams or training facilities will have enough interest to build a long-term business plan that justifies development the interactive playing course features. We believe that the ZONE needs to have a version that will appeal to home consumers. We do not believe that home consumers will buy a bulky game score simulator in quantities enough to mass market. We do not envision that a high-priced custom installed product that might cater to high income extremes in the sports will sell in sufficient quantities to justify business development. We also do not believe the original version that uses a laptop, corded EEG and thermistors taped to the user will appeal to athletes for regular usage.  We have concluded that the best path to market is to rework the ZONE system to interface with a smart phone or smart watch using Bluetooth connections rather than wires. We also concluded that the revised device must have the latest motion and heart rate sensors integrated to expand its utility, we would prefer to also add 5g geolocation proximity sensors to the headband and two to four ankle and wristband sensors that can map body actual motion in the actual sport motion of a live course. We believe that the system cost with the additional hardware along with the MUSE headband could be produced for under $300 in small quantities and under $150 in mass produced scale. We assume that software development to integrate these additional features will add 18 months and $10 million to the development costs above what is available in the zone patents. We expect that total development costs for the revised product will reach about $35 million with marketing costs. The breakeven point for investors requires a minimum of $350 million in revenue at 10% net profit, which would equate to 1.2 million zone systems sold at $300 each. In comparison over the past ten years 63 million Fitbit wristbands have been sold at its peak amounting with peak sales of 22 million wristbands in 2016, in 2020 Fitbit sold 17 million. We do not expect the ZONE solution to easily surpass the past success of the Fitbit entry to market since the psychology aspect of ZONE benefits has a smaller potential demographic. The Fitbit appealed to a wider demographic as a step counter that tells the user how many calories, they can eat without gaining weight. Calorie accounting has a clear measurable daily justification in everyone’s daily food choices. Concertation effectiveness will likely appeal to less than 5% of market success of the Fitbit wristband, which would give us an estimated market of 3 million headbands over ten years. We suggest conducting some market studies with existing fitness wearable owners to test their receptiveness to the ZONE training technology to verify potential market appeal before proceeding.

S. Implementation Program for next 24 months

Next 60 days, further research for other unknown wireless headband patents, order 50 Muse headbands, have staff and student test accuracy and utility of the devices. Next 6 months develop some sports challenges that can be measured using MUSE existing software and invite 100 Fitbit owners to participate in demonstrations to gauge market appeal. If functionality and market appeal feedback are promising, reverse engineer a MUSE headband and compare the operations to its 16 related patents to establish possibilities to design around Interxion’s IP.  If no other manufacturers are available and MUSE headband functions cannot be easily duplicating, contact Interaxion to discuss licensing or partnerships. The NASA name for marketing edge and the possible cooperation gained through the partnership with US government in export and FDA approvals may appeal to the inventors.

Assuming partnership with Interaxion and a sub 3% royalty rate can be agreed to with NASA, contact venture capital funders in hopes of finding one willing to gamble on investing the $35 million to integrate additional wristbands into the headband functions and code the software needed to create an interactive graphic simulator for several popular sports. Once a product is developed and tested, pitch the product to big tech firms, beginning with Fitbit, Garmin and Withing to look for a global distribution partner. Assuming all has went well and all these partnership agreements were successful focus on simplifying the user experience for lower tech consumers. If the sports market is scaled enough to support additional research and development, focus on expansion into learning and behavioral disorders for children. A greater total attainable market might be uncovered marketing a single solution that parents can use with several children at teaching self-regulation of behavior.

Assuming all the above was a success, it is time to take your stock option profits and buy a new car, a vacation home to celebrate your genius business insights. Later in life, after realizing that semi-retirement is unsatisfying, invest in other health startups and help them scale their ideas to market.

T. Next Step Flow Chart Gant

References and tables from the class worksheets

Market Expansion

macro-level factors that have a major impact on past and projected sales for the industry are that the price of biofeedback devices is still high and their availability is insufficient, which helps the market growth. Usually, biofeedback instruments are available at hospitals; however, they are currently available at homes, due to the rising trend of having a biofeedback instrument at home. An increase in the use of various healthcare products worldwide is likely to be a significant driver of the biofeedback instrument market in the next few years. 

Biofeedback instruments involve a mind–body technique to procure control over automatic bodily functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, and blood flow. It is used to predetermine the symptoms of high or low blood pressure, pain, anxiety, headache, and chronic stress. This can be achieved by relaxing specific muscles, decelerating the heart rate, or reducing feelings of discomfort. People are becoming more health-conscious, which is estimated to promote the growth of the market for biofeedback instruments during the forecast period.

Name of researcher(s), their department(s) and description of potential product(s) to be derived from the technology.

There is substantial university research on biofeedback devices such as on EEG Sports Technologies for improved athletic performance:

Joanne L. Park, Malcolm M. Fairweather, David I. Donaldson,

Making the case for mobile cognition: EEG and sports performance,

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Volume 52,

2015,

Pages 117-130,

ISSN 0149-7634,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.02.014.

  AUTHOR=Cheron Guy, Petit Géraldine, Cheron Julian, Leroy Axelle, Cebolla Anita, Cevallos Carlos, Petieau Mathieu, Hoellinger Thomas, Zarka David, Clarinval Anne-Marie, Dan Bernard

TITLE=Brain Oscillations in Sport: Toward EEG Biomarkers of Performance  

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology     VOLUME=7     

 YEAR=2016PAGES=246    RL=https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00246    

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00246   

Pluta A, Williams CC, Binsted G, Hecker KG, Krigolson OE. Chasing the zone: Reduced beta power predicts baseball batting performance. Neurosci Lett. 2018 Nov 1;686:150-154. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2018.09.004. Epub 2018 Sep 6. PMID: 30195975.

Mikicin M, Orzechowski G, Jurewicz K, Paluch K, Kowalczyk M, Wróbel A. Brain-training for physical performance: a study of EEG-neurofeedback and alpha relaxation training in athletes. Acta Neurobiol Exp (Wars). 2015;75(4):434-45. PMID: 26994421.

Rijken NH, Soer R, de Maar E, Prins H, Teeuw WB, Peuscher J, Oosterveld FG.

“Increasing Performance of Professional Soccer Players and Elite Track and Field Athletes with Peak Performance Training and Biofeedback: A Pilot Study.”

Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2016 Oct 19.                                                   

https://www.credenceresearch.com/report/neurofeedback-systems-market#:~:text=The%20neurofeedback%20systems%20market%20is,period%20from%202018%20to%202026.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253820/
https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/biofeedback-instrument-market
https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health