Guess Who Succeeds In Paving A New Way In The Current Iot Market? - Part 1
An awful din is seen in the IoT market these days where everyone claims to be winning, leading or pioneering. But do you know who’s actually winning? Now IoT being a homogenous marketplace cannot have one single player to rule all.
For example, there are two IoT worlds:
Consumer IoT
Industrial IoT
Consumer IoT is all about connected solutions that directly impact lives of consumers like wearables, connected cars whereas industrial IoT extends beyond the home and office to manufacturing and the factory floor. The term is no more a science fiction. Right from smart homes to connected cars to smart healthcare, consumers, vendors and several other segments are gearing up for the next big thing. Perhaps, IoT is much more than those wristbands, gadgets, and watches.
Soon, Everything Will Be Connected!
2015 was the year everyone talked about the internet of things and so was 2014 and 2013. But unlike before, it was the year where professionals started making plans, laying an effective groundwork and building appropriate infrastructure for the day when all devices will be connected. From Apple TV to Homekit hub, Amazon Echo, Alexa, turn the lights off- IoT is everywhere.
Now if we talk about its ecosystem, from chip manufacturers to communication providers, platform vendors, cloud providers, the entire thing is complex and diverse. So, no single player will be able to dominate this market. However, there are well-known companies who each day strive hard to exploit the opportunity that exists in consumer IoT.
With a high brand recall, right design elements, proven leadership in software and substantial investments in infrastructure, they are paving the way for a new dimension in connectivity and intelligence with profound implications for our society as well as economy. In order to succeed with the technology, one requires broad penetration into the digital lifestyle segment, a software platform combined with a healthy developer ecosystem, and a massive infrastructure at disposal to deal with demanding computing, storage, networking, and database needs.
The following post explores a few high-end entities in the industry that have all these capabilities and are poised to be most valuable companies of consumer IoT market.
Amazon
Starting off as an online bookseller, today Amazon is considered as one of the largest cloud infrastructure provider. It has been around 2 decades, the company has come a long way emerging as a key platform vendor giving stressful nights to its competitors. Through projects like Kindle TV, Amazon Echo, and Amazon Dash, the company is getting into the living rooms. Amazon Echo is my favorite because of its engagement model where users can ‘speak’ to it to place orders, music, get weather information and traffic conditions.
Apart from this, Amazon dash demonstrates an innovative retail channel that brands can use to build consumer loyalty. However, Kindle hasn’t succeeded enough but it does have all the required ingredients to turn into a unified consumer brand. It is assumed that AWS will become the backbone of Amazon’s IoT strategy, it has everything it takes to host an end-to-end IoT platform in the cloud.
Core Strengths - Strong retail presence, Kindle platform, developer community, AWS, and 2lemetry.
Apple
One of the most valuable consumer technology firm that aims to deliver best possible IoT experience since its inception. Whether it’s a premier phone to a vibrant developer community to massive infrastructure, Apple has everything it takes to become the category leader. It is supposed that iPhone and Siri will become de facto front-ends for engagement while Apple TV and Time Capsule have the potential to become the hub of connected things at home. Besides, Apple Homekit has succeeded in building applications for the connected homes.
In February 2015, Reuters reported that Apple is experimenting with the concept of self-driven cars. Sounds interesting, isn’t it? Currently, OS X, iOS, HomeKit, HealthKit, iBeacon, and CarPlay have almost touched each and every aspect of digital lifestyle.
Core Strengths - Credibility in the consumer market, OS X and iOS platforms, wearables and set-top boxes, vibrant developer community, expertise in managing scalable infrastructure.
To be continued...
Learn about Google & Microsoft in the upcoming post.