Software, hardware and services boosted IBM's AI revenue by 19%, with IBM capturing 9.2% share of overall AI market in 2018

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 (Doc # US45334719, July 2019) report, which ranked companies by global AI revenue in 2018.

According to IDC, the worldwide AI market grew 35.6% to $28.1 billion last year as a result of announcements, initiatives and acquisitions. IBM took the lead with 9.2% share of the overall market, as revenue rose to $2.58 billion, 19% higher than the previous year, driven by growth across software, hardware and services.

"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, General Manager, IBM Watson AI. "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."

As reported by IDC, IBM has made critical commitments to information architecture with the launch of IBM Cloud Pak™ for Data, a multicloud data platform that runs on Red Hat OpenShift; announced Watson OpenScale to address bias detection and maintain trust and transparency in AI; and brought to market a line of Watson solutions and services pre-trained to benefit industries and professions, including agriculture, HR, supply chain, automotive and manufacturing. With Watson Anywhere, Watson products can run anywhere across hybrid multicloud environments, eliminating vendor lock-in and allowing 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 Vice President, Artificial Intelligence, at 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."

About IBM & Artificial Intelligence
A world leader in AI for business, Watson solutions have been deployed in thousands of engagements with clients across 20 industries and 80 countries. Additionally, IBM Research is a world leader in the science of AI. In 2018, IBM secured over 1600 AI-related patents.