IoT Platform Winner? - Microsoft vs. Google vs. Apple

Image courtesy - AxeeTech.com

I am intrigued by Daniel Kline’s prediction on Motley Fool in his article - "The Best Way to Invest Money in the Internet of Things" - http://bit.ly/1ORgwy8. Daniel picks that Microsoft will make its investors the most amount of money in the IoT space compared to Apple or Google. 

Here’s my dissection of this forecast followed by caveats.

Daniel purports the above because –

1.   Apple has isolated itself to the apple ecosystem

2.   Google has given away its OS for free and its current app-leveraged revenue model won’t work for IoT

Google has not directly made money from the Android OS, but from the app-fees. In the IoT world, essentially, no big money can be made from pure OS licensing since a significantly stripped down version of the OS (for device implementations) will be deployed. In the Android world, this makes it tough for apps to be designed that have sufficient volume of application and an exceptionally difficult standardization problem. For Apple, it still holds sway within the apple ecosystem, but not beyond.

This is where Microsoft will offer more control, especially with its new push towards cross platform interoperability. Microsoft is becoming more and more open towards its products running on iOS or Android. It can pretty much control its own OS licensing model, from free to charged. It can offer up apps that will have a much wider interoperability and application. This coupled with Azure analytics (Azure IoT suite) make Windows adoption for IoT devices compelling.

However, there are gaps - device level reliability and security. In this area, Apple still has the lead.

In summary, the speculation seems to be that Microsoft has more “structural control” over the IoT space because – (a) The device OS will be stripped down and (b) MS is open to interoperability.

If any of the above parameters change or Apple decides to up the game outside of the apple ecosystem, then the market share numbers could change dramatically.