Internet of Things Industry Groups

Two IoT Industry Groups - But Several Key Players Did Not Join!

Standardization has allowed technologies to proliferate.  How? If  a few key players in an industry  agreed on how hardware and/or software should work, a standard can be published and everyone can focus on building interoperable products to sell.  IBM PC was an open standard and gained great lead in market share over "closed" Apple Macs. Most standards are open, so what will differentiate one product from another is dictated by the 4Ps : product, price, promotion, placement. Good for the consumer.


IoT has become the next major area of focus for hardware and software companies. So much so that much hype (too much) has been endowed on it. One key draw of IoT devices is that they operate in a heterogeneous environment - a mish mash of devices can talk to any network. The devices, the protocol, the access and gateway points, and how it communicates with the cloud - all can benefit from standardization so the the devices can plug-n-play.

In order to increase the adoption of IoT, devices and gateways need to talk to each other. To do that, hardware is usually under the control of software for data and control. Software have Application Programming Interfaces (API) that allow different blocks of software to talk to each other in a standards, predictable way. In order to establish a standard software API,  key players in this industry need to band together to form standards. Unfortunately, two major camps have formed two competing industry groups:

   1. Allseen Alliance (premier member) : Canon, Eletrolux, Haier, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, QEO, Qualcomm, Sharp, Silicon Image, Sony

   2. Open Interconnect Consortium (Diamond Members listed): Cisco, GE, Intel, Mediatek,  Samsung

Apple HomeKit

An astute reader will probably notice some of the biggest players in the mobile arena is absent - Apple, Google, and Amazon. Apple is famously closed (aka secretive) about its hardware and software. But it is fairly public about its push into the IoT world with its HomeKit.   Google made its intention for IoT obvious by buying Nest for $3.2B mid 2014. Amazon "snuck" into the IoT fray with its popular and ever increasing in functionality Amazon Echo.




With a battle of the 2 industry IoT open standards looming, plus with the big "close standard" heavy weights not even participating, there appears to be a huge fragmentation of the IoT industry. With the push for Open Source,  will the consortium approach win? Or will the closed standard companies be able to point the product in a laser sharp fashion, making the slow consensus based consortium behind?