IBM’s famous Watson supercomputer might be able to pummel the competition at Jeopardy, but the intelligent computer isn’t exactly a champion when it comes to generating revenue. In a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, the paper says that IBM CEO Virginia Rometty projected on a conference call this past October that Watson will generate $1 billion in revenue annually by 2018, and $10 billion in total sales over the next 10 years. On the same call, however, Rometty said that Watson’s cumulative revenue as of October 2013 was just $100 million despite the fact that the company has spent the past three years trying to turn Watson into a moneymaker. WSJ says that IBM remains confident that Waston will become one of its most important innovations ever, though, and current use cases include using Watson to power customer service systems and as the brains for various cloud-based apps and services.
The smartest computer in the world has been a huge disappointment
Published Jan 8th, 2014 12:56PM EST
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Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 15 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
