IBM demos Watson customer retail experience at MWC

IBM has been showing off the commercial applications of its Watson assistant at MWC.

Having sold its x86 server business, Big Blue is pushing to commercialise the cloud-based Watson service and make it a premier revenue generator.

Watson has been primarily used in healthcare environments up to now, but with the establishment of an $1bn division, IBM is looking to bring the technology to other verticals.

Watson can be used by retailers or banks to interact with customers in real-time via online chat boxes and provide them information or answer queries. IBM believes there is a massive opportunity for retailers, as it claims that 70 per cent of shopping baskets are abandoned because customers don't have enough information to make the purchase. This is something Watson can address.

We were shown a personalised shopping experience, which is being developed for the North Face website:

Khidr Suleman is the Technical Editor at IT Pro, a role he has fulfilled since March 2012. He is responsible for the reviews section on the site - so get in touch if you have a product you think might be of interest to the business world. He also covers the hardware and operating systems beats. Prior to joining IT Pro, Khidr worked as a reporter at Incisive Media. He studied law at the University of Reading and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism and Online Writing at PMA Training.