Disclaimer: This is tough to speculate on because neural networks can
be used for quite a number of applications. Common ones are sales
forecasting, industrial process control, customer research, data
validation, risk management, and target marketing. That pretty much
covers every industry with significant overlap in many cases. It might
be better to take a look at what the world spends on software and make
an educated guess about what portion of new software can benefit from
neural networks.
Consider this:
* The size of the software industry is approximately $116.3 billion in
the United States(1).
* The US represents 20.9% of the world's GDP(2)
If the rest of the world's economies are in similar proportion to the
US in terms of industry composition, then the world's software
industry is [1/.209]*116.3 billion, or $556.5 billion USD. That's a
big "if" though. I would say that $556.5 billion is the high side of
the world's software industry. To correct the estimate down somewhat,
let's assume that Europe is identical to the U.S. in terms of software
industry size and that the rest of the world's economies have software
industries represented only half as strong. Let's take a weighted
average:
At the US rate, software revenue is about $5.565 billion/percent of
GDP. Half that is 2.783. So,
Software_GDP(US) = 20.9 * 5.565
Software_GDP(Europe) = 15.3 * 5.565
Software_GDP(Rest of World) = 63.8 * 2.783
===============================================
Total Software Industry: $379 billion USD
Note: all GDP figures came from the IMF. See footnote 2.
Specific areas:
Video games rely heavily on neural networks for AI. "Beating the
computer" is pretty tough these days. In 2000 the market size for
video games was $28.8 billion(3). Extrapolating at a modest 5% growth
over five years, the market size now is roughly $36.76 billion. That's
almost 32% of the US total software industry right there.
Business applications market share can be extrapolated in large part
from a recent article where SAP claims it's share of the US market is
41%(4). According to SAP's recent Annual Report, their US sales are
1.9 billion EUR, or $23.18 billion USD(5). Do the math and that's
$56.5 billion USD for the US market in enterprise business systems,
another 48.6%.
Let's be conservative and assume that business applications and video
games, represented by 80.6% of the US market correlate to our world
software industry revenues calculated above. That brings the current
market potential to $379 billion USD * .806 = $305 billion USD.
Answer: The world market for neural network applications, defined by
their current use in business and gaming software, is $305 billion
USD. The US is a more accurate number represented by $116.3 billion *
.806 = $93.7 billion USD.
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1. http://www.ibisworld.com/snapshot/industry/default.asp?page=industry&industry_id=1239
2. The Economist, June 4th 2005. Pg. 98.
3. http://rocsearch.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0273-3872_ITM
4. Parker, Akweli. Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. Washington:
Apr 22, 2005. pg. 1
5. http://www.sap.com/company/investor/reports/annualreport/2004/pdf/2004_SAP_Annual_Report.pdf |
