The market for “enterprise forecastingâ€, or “predictive analytics†(a subset of “business intelligenceâ€, “data miningâ€) is a very promising direction but I doubt that predictive analytics will be a billion dollar industry by itself anytime soon. (http://www.informationweek.com/news/business_intelligence/analytics/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208402971).
Of course, prediction markets cannot be a billion dollar industry if the container industry is smaller than that.
On the other hand, building predictive analytics solutions for enterprises, using data mining, is very hard. Data are spread across hundreds of databases, different formats, incompatibilities… Very few companies have high-quality data warehouses that can be readily mined (e.g., Walmart).
On the other hand, this presents some opportunity for prediction markets. They are easier to understand, potentially easier to deploy, and can be fun to use. Even companies like Walmart (with excellent forecasting tools) may have uses for the markets, to get signals that are currently ignored from their lower-ranked employees.
