IBM Watson Declared A Leader In IoT Platforms 2017 By IDC

Market research firm IDC recently acknowledged International Business Machines Corporation’s (NYSE:IBM) Watson Internet of Things (IoT) platform as a “Leader” in its Marketscape for 2017 Worldwide IoT Platforms. IBM’s IoT platform features were evaluated along with that of 12 other players from the industry.

Notably, in today’s data driven world, IoT platforms play a huge role. Such a platform connects devices and gateways and processes and analyzes information gathered from devices for relevant actions. Additionally, security of the entire process is also taken care of.

Hence, this is one of the most booming areas of the technology sector with a wide range of applications, from wearable devices to smart homes and connected cars to smart cities. We note that with a huge customer base that includes the likes of BMW, BNP Paribas (PA:BNPP), Avnet (NYSE:AVT) , Tech Mahindra and Fortiss, IBM has the resources to establish its strong foothold in the IoT market going forward.

We believe the growth prospects in Watson along with the opportunities in the cloud segment and Blockchain technology will help IBM’s shares to rebound. The stock has underperformed the S&P 500 on a year-to-date basis. While the index gained 9.8%, the stock lost 5.8% over the same time frame.

Is IBM Poised to Reap the Benefits of IoT Growth?

Forbes in a recent article quoted Boston Consulting Group stating that by 2020 business to business (B2B) spending on IoT technologies, applications and solutions will reach €250 billion ($267 billion). IoT revenues are estimated to witness compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20% from 2015 to 2020.

We note that IBM has decided to invest around $3 billion for IoT development. An initial investment of $200 million was made in Watson IoT headquarters in Munich in Oct 2016. Per IBM’s estimates, there will be around 30 billion connected devices by 2020, thus increasing the need for IoT platforms. Thus, the company’s investment in the technology is quite well planned.

We believe Watson, despite being a late entry, is slowly gaining user acceptance in different industrial sectors, ranging from healthcare to finance. Hence, we can anticipate steady growth of the company driven by IoT and AI technologies which will eventually help the company to compete against peers like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) , Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) , Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).

Zacks Rank

Currently, IBM has a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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