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Access to market is governed by leading providers
The competitive situation is mentioned as one of the main barriers to entry in the IoT market. Most respondents do not see feasible to have alternatives to the existing general-purpose voice assistants (Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s voice assistant). The costs for developing such technologies are almost prohibitively high. Therefore, the business strategy is usually to expand the IoT offering and the accessibility of smart devices via those general-purpose voice assistants. Overall, access to voice-assistants and operating systems is considered essential to compete.
In practice, this means that Amazon, Google and Apple are in a favourable position. They govern integration with their products “by imposing certification processes, which they control unilaterally in most cases”. The specifications and types of software that enable interoperability with the operating systems and the voice assistants are made available to third parties subject to the conclusion of agreements. These agreements are usually not open to negotiation.
Heterogeneity of standards
The European Commission observes that there is a variety of standards in the sector: open standards, protocols and proprietary and open-source technologies. Standardised technologies prevail for basic enabling technologies (e.g. WIFI or Bluetooth). However, proprietary technologies -of the leading OS and voice assistant providers- lead the other aspects, such as device definitions, application layers and user interfaces. Certain proprietary technologies are becoming de facto standards.
Some respondents called for further standardisation while other said that standardisation is not necessarily the best solution for interoperability in the sector.
Data
The final report underlines that OS providers and/or voice assistance providers usually have access to data in relation to a third party’s activities. By contrast, the leading voice assistance providers tend to limit data access and use for third parties, while themselves having extensive data access.
There are no industry-wise standardised formats for collecting and sharing data between consumer IoT companies.
Out-of-the-box features
Some respondents raised concerns regarding the out-of-the-box features that are available to users. There are practices regarding pre-installation and default-setting that may determine the visibility and findability of a service.
If you have any questions on this topic, please do not hesitate to contact Camille Dornier - Policy Manager: camille.dornier@eurosmart.com
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