[Put together, the announcements at Google I/O and from Apple, Samsung, Nest, Quirky and others in the past weeks paint a crystal clear picture of where the future of the Internet of Things is heading. Our latest report on the topic gives you the right tools to separate winners from losers in the IoT race. In this post, we line up the candidates in smart homes, smart cars and health.]
The blast of IoT-related announcements in the past days and weeks, including at Apple WWDC and Google I/O, are more than an indication that the Internet of Things is picking up pace. Put together, they also offer a crystal clear picture of where the Internet of Things is heading.
The major players have put their stake in the ground:
A lot of attention at Google’s I/O conference went to the Google Wear and Google Fit announcements. At the same time, Google-owned home automation company Nest – known from its thermostat, smoke detector and now security camera (Nest acquired Dropcam) – has opened up its API to developers.
With the “Works with Nest” program, the company is positioning itself as the central hub for connected devices in the home; and it is not alone. Crowdsourcing product development site Quirky announced Wink, a hub + app + cloud platform that together with Nest is going to provide some strong competition for that other hub-in-the-home startup: SmartThings. Quirky is an interesting player as its backed by GE, with whom they have been partnering on a range of smart home solutions.
Apple announced HomeKit and HealthKit at its WWDC developer conference, adding to its push into the car earlier this year with CarPlay.
Samsung, finally, announced its own health platform SAMI and sensor designs Simband last month.
The common theme is that [tweetable]all these recent IoT announcements focus on developers more than products. Why is that?[/tweetable]
All these companies have understood a fundamental truth about the Internet of Things. IoT is not about technology or features or devices or connectivity. We explain this idea in depth, and with many more examples, in our new report – IoT: Breaking Free of Internet and Things.
[tweetable]The biggest opportunity in IoT is in thousands of niches and use cases, just waiting to be discovered[/tweetable] by tweaking and experimenting with new ideas.
How do you deal as a company with such diversity and unpredictability? How do you design products for future unknown needs? Luckily we have some recent examples of companies that solved this conundrum. In the past 6 years, Apple and Google propelled themselves to top positions in mobile by fostering vibrant communities of innovators (app developers) that together unlocked countless new use cases and needs, from silly (Flappy Bird) to life saving (PocketCPR).
We’ll leave the full discussion of the exact mechanics for another time, but with the smartphone model in hand, it becomes clear what the companies above are trying to do. They want to achieve the same kind of dominant position as Apple and Google in mobile, using the same recipe. And some of them inevitably will.
The stakes are high. Successful community owners will gain immense competitive advantages, typically leading to winner-takes-all markets. The game is on: [tweetable]who will be the equivalents of iOS and Android in the Internet of Things?[/tweetable]
Who will be the kings of IoT?
Three areas in particular seem on the brink of seeing Android/iOS-like ecosystems of entrepreneurs gaining momentum: home, health and cars.
In the home, there are at least 4 serious ecosystem contenders.
Apple signalled its intentions by releasing HomeKit, the developer API that enables discovery and control of third party connected devices. Some clever people (e.g. at Forbes and Macworld) have pointed out that the Apple TV might be the perfect substrate for a HomeKit-driven hub.
Google has made a clear investment in the home with its $3.2B acquisition of Nest, as well as other initiatives like Android TV and ChromeCast.
GE has been building momentum with its Quirky partnership and now the Wink platform.
Meanwhile in startup land, SmartThings has been pursuing this ecosystem vision for almost 2 years since its headline-making Kickstarter campaign.
In health and wellness, things are heating up too. Fitness wearables like Pebble, Razer, Nike+ and Fitbit have successful SDKs with tens of thousands of registered developers. However, in our new report we explain that the bigger opportunity is in combining and mashing up data from different sources. That is the core functionality of the following candidates:
Apple puts its stake in the ground with HealthKit.
Samsung did the same with the SAMI platform. Samsung is in a unique position to bundle an IoT platform with hardware (components, not devices), for example the set of reference sensors (Simband) that they announced at the same time. This strategy is also the basis for the company’s success in smartphones. Samsung can also bring a large amount of Samsung device users into play; a strong carrot for ambitious IoT entrepreneurs.
Google has been playing with wearables for a while (Android Wear, Google Glass). At Google I/O, the company announced Google Fit, a set of APIs that will “blend data from multiple apps and devices”.
Again there are several startups on the scene – Human API and Validic come to mind.
In cars too, we find a mix of internet giants, car maker incumbents and startups that are building developer platforms. We discussed them in depth in our March report “Apps for Connected Cars? Your Mileage May Vary”.
Apple took the lead earlier this year by announcing CarPlay.
Google is following suit with Android Auto, backed by the Open Automotive Alliance with all the major car makers. The announcement mentioned that “Android developers will soon be able to create entirely new experiences for the car” – a clear hint at Google’s intentions to empower a community of entrepreneurs to discover unexpected user needs.
Microsoft has Windows in the Car.
The leading platform-oriented car makers are Ford with AppLink and GM.
Interesting startups with an “over the dashboard” play include Dash and Carvoyant.
What about the sectors that have historically been the focus of the Internet of Things industry, like utilities (smart metering), industrial applications or smart cities? While they represent attractive business opportunities, these arenas focus mostly on solving well-understood needs for known customers. As such, they are not likely to sprout ecosystems that can spectacularly break open the IoT market.
On the other hand, we might see some unexpected platform players coming on the scene. One set of strong candidates focuses on a different part of the IoT challenge: selling and distributing the physical products. Amazon has made its opening in the Internet of Things with a dedicated online storefront and with back-end services (Kinetics), a simple expansion for its AWS infrastructure. We’ve written earlier this year about the plans of Chinese e-commerce company JD.com (together with Baidu) to set up a service line for IoT entrepreneurs.
The wheels are in motion
Time will tell who will take the top position, but the wheels are clearly in motion.
As time goes by, hardware becomes less and less a barrier to entry. Just look at Cruise, an 8-person startup that built a self-driving car in record time with low-cost sensors and components. Dedicated Internet of Things platforms are booming (we count 50+ so far). The cost of connectivity is dropping. This allows entrepreneurs to focus on making sense of data and drive meaningful action, more than on solving underlying technology problems.
As this trend continues, VisionMobile forecasts a fast growth of the IoT developer base in the next years, reaching well over 4 million innovators and entrepreneurs by the end of the decade. With every new use for Internet of Things technology that they discover, demand will grow and this market will become more attractive still. Exciting times!
How can you separate winners from losers in the Internet of Things? Whether you’re a developer, investor or platform company, our IoT report will allow you to make the right bets. Download your copy now.
