The Internet of Things is a reality today. However, no individual player will be able to dominate this market. There are a few companies strategically placed to leverage the existing opportunities in consumer IoT. They have strong brands, suitable design elements, a high level of software expertise and heavy investments in infrastructure.
Although several hardware and platform firms are interested, only a handful will become important to customers. A successful IoT platform demands wide penetration into the digital lifestyle segment, a software platform united with a healthy developer ecosystem and a large infrastructure. All these are required to meet computing, storage, networking and database needs. There exist only a few organizations that possess all these capabilities. We look at two firms with the capability to be the most important firms of the consumer IoT market.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has become the key platform vendor in just two decades. It has all the attributes to become a dominant IoT player. Amazon is entering the living rooms via Amazon Echo, Kindle TV, and Amazon Dash. AWS is the cornerstone of Amazon’s IoT strategy. It contains everything necessary to host an end-to-end IoT platform in the cloud. The acquisition of 2lemetry by Amazon gave latter, capabilities in the domains of standard protocols and complex event processing.
Amazon’s core strengths include powerful retail presence, Kindle platform, developer community, AWS, and 2lemetry.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the numero uno of the consumer world. iPhone and Siri will be front-ends for engagement. Apple TV and Time Capsule will be the hub of connected things at home. Apple has relevant experience managing iCloud and iTunes in the field of infrastructure. Apple has added big data and analytics tools to its repertoire.
Apple’s core strengths include good reputation in the consumer market, OS X and iOS platforms, wearables and set-top boxes, dynamic developer community, skill in handling scalable infrastructure.
Source: Forbes.com
