http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-10/ibms-artificial-intelligence-problem-or-why-watson-cant-get-a-job
Watson realized $100 million in revenue vs. a predicted 10 billion. That is a factor 100 off. Such a forecast error is not really a good showcase for "predictive analytics." Of course these kind of predictions are often more goal setting or inspirational rather than serious forecasts. (For me $100 million is not something to sneeze at).
It might have generated enough "buzz" to pay for part of itself in terms of advertisement for IBM. Also, I would expect some of the technologies used in Watson to be used in projects related around the buzzword "big data", which is of course a lot of money.
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