Don't rule out a 3rd factor: in the facial recognition industry it is difficult to earn a profit. In general a FR client already has an existing camera network

Don't rule out a 3rd factor: in the facial recognition industry it is difficult to earn a profit. In general a FR client already has an existing camera network they want to add FR - meaning the quality control over the image quality is already gone. They also already have a security video management system, so whatever FR solution IBM proposes has to interoperate with that other pre-existing video management software. So right there, two traditional sources of major profit are already occupied, and in order to play in this industry one's FR software needs to be able to work with any pre-existing camera network(s) as well as interoperate with any pre-existing video surveillance software... setting all that up is not cheap and the customer is often low-tech and expecting magic...