IBM Watson Dies at CES as Shares Near 52-Week Low

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:18PM EST · Published Jan 8, 6:47AM EST

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IBM Watson Dies at CES as Shares Near 52-Week Low — © Wikimedia Commons (Asa Mathat / Fortune Live Media)

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty gave a keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in which she said the company’s Watson, the artificial intelligence (AI) process, will change the world. Wall Street did not agree. IBM’s shares are off nearly 6% over the past month and 17% over the past year.

The most memorable statement by Rometty was that AI computer technology will “change the way you are.” IBM has not lined up enough large customers for Watson and its related software to support that. While the company says approximately 80,000 programmers have put Watson into apps and other software, IBM has little to show in terms of revenue.

The best IBM could do at CES was a marriage of Watson with athletic gear company Under Armour Inc. (NYSE: UA). In a press release, the two firms stated they would:

… create and provide meaningful data-backed health and fitness insights, powered by IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology. Under Armour’s new UA Record™ combined with a Cognitive Coaching System will serve as a personal health consultant, fitness trainer and assistant by providing athletes with timely, evidence-based coaching around your sleep, fitness, activity and nutrition, including outcomes achieved based on others “like you.”

If that is the most important partnership IBM can use to boast about Watson adoption in a CES keynote, the tech company has a long way to go.
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The purpose of keynote speeches at CES is to announce meaningful and substantial advances in a company’s products and plans. Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings announced that its streaming service is available in over 130 countries. He described it as the “birth of a new global internet TV network.” The number of countries justifies the excitement.

Watson may be the software product of the future. However, so far, it is barely more than a demonstration tool for an IBM initiative that has not improved the company’s fortunes enough for investors to believe IBM has much of a future.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.