It’s hard to keep up with all the IoT platforms out there, we estimate around 500 of them exist. However, despite all the excitement around IoT, more than half of these platform plays are generating less than $1M in revenue. Ouch! That said, we think there is still massive potential for platforms focused on industry verticals, tech and use case.
In 2013, at the peak of IoT platforms, we saw mostly horizontal solutions trying to solve all the world’s problems. None of it worked. We experienced The Internet of Broken Things. What was missing was a communication layer that allows things to talk to the internet, because the industrial devices simply did not speak to each other.
The world of Industrial IoT devices is fragmented, heterogeneous and non-interoperable, and horizontal platforms are boiling the ocean as a result. Platforms segmented by verticals, tech and use cases may contribute to increased short-term fragmentation but ultimately, help the industry as a whole get traction.