IDC Names IBM Worldwide AI Market Share Leader

For a third year in a row, IBM has been ranked the market share leader in the IDC Market Share: Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Market Shares, 2018: Steady Growth — POCs Poised to Enter Full-Blown Production report. The report ranked companies by their global AI revenue in 2018.

“IBM's recognition in IDC's report demonstrates the strength of our business and our leading position at the forefront of artificial intelligence,” said Beth Smith, GM, Watson AI, IBM. “As the AI market moves from experimentation to production, we're helping businesses integrate AI with their applications to make more accurate predictions, automate decisions and processes, and free up employees' time so they can focus on higher value work.”

According to the IDC, the worldwide AI market has grown 35.6 percent to $28.1 billion last year as a result of IBM’s announcements, initiatives and acquisitions. The computer corporation took the lead with 9.2 percent share of the overall market, as their revenue built up to $2.58 billion. This is 19 percent higher than the previous year. It was driven by growth across software, hardware and services.

IBM has made critical commitments to information architecture with the launch of IBM Cloud Pak for Data. This is a multi-cloud data platform that works on Red Hat OpenShift. IBM has also announced the availability of their program, Watson OpenScale to address bias detection and maintain trust and transparency in AI.

The company has brought to the market a line of Watson solutions and services pre-trained to benefit industries and professions. This includes agriculture, HR, supply chain, automotive and manufacturing. With Watson Anywhere, the associated products can run anywhere across hybrid multi-cloud environments. This eliminates vendor lock-in and allows companies to keep their data where it resides. 

“In 2018, IDC saw that organizations have been slowly moving from proof of concepts (POC) to full-blown production with the use of AI applications within the spectrum of business processes across the enterprise,” said Ritu Jyoti, Program VP, Artificial Intelligence, IDC. “The AI market is seeing significant growth in all the technology categories from software to hardware to services. IDC expects to see this trend continue, even though there are quite a few practical challenges for widescale adoption.”