Top 20 IoT companies: IBM takes #1 spot on back of $3bn investment | Q2/2015 update
IBM is leading the Internet of Things companies ranking for Q2/2015 mainly due to its massive investment of $3bn it is starting to put into IoT.
Other major findings of the Q2 IoT companies ranking:
- Intel, that had previously been number 1, has fallen to the third position.
- The race between the five big companies (IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft and Cisco) continues. Apple is starting to join the pack as a sixth company.
- What is striking about IBM is that the American software giant now employs more than 1,400 employees in the Internet of Things, almost 50% more as the second biggest IoT employer (Cisco).
- SAP remains the highest ranked non-US company in 7th
- The list includes a number of new entries to the top 20 list, including Ericsson, Qualcomm, Orange, Facebook, and Dell.
- Gartner, ARM, Accenture, Arduino, IDC, PTC have fallen out of the top 20.
The IoT companies ranking is published by IoT Analytics on a quarterly basis. The aim of the ranking is to quantify the popularity and activity of the biggest IoT companies as the technology evolves.
Q2/2015: The top 5 IoT companies
1. IBM (+4)
IBM’s announcement in late March 2015 that it would invest $3 billion over the next four years into a separate IoT division has wowed the IoT community. And it seems IBM has acted immediately: With more than 1,400 employees working in IoT, IBM has made a big step forward. Search traffic for IBM in relation with IoT has also increased largely.
In addition to the announcement of its own IoT division, IBM recently formed important industry partnerships, like a joint development of Continental’s connected mobile vehicle solution or the monitoring& predictive analytics of Pratt & Whitney’s 4,000+ commercial jet engines.
2. Google (+2)
Google has now officially introduced products for the Internet of Things. On May 28th at the Google I/O conference, the company announced Brillo, the “underlying operating system for the Internet of Things,” with a developer preview coming in Q3 of this year.
Additionally there’s Weave, the (cross platform) common language that will let Brillo devices, phones, and the internet all talk to one another — that’s coming in Q4.
3. Intel (-2)
The Internet of Things drives Intel’s revenues. Intel made more than half a billion dollars from the “Internet of Things” in Q2/2015, the latest sign that IoT is starting to become a significant revenue driver for tech companies.
Breaking out sales for the first time from what Intel calls “embedded” systems in retail, transport, industrial and domestic products, the chipmaker said that the $533m from connected devices helped to offset “lower than expected demand” for business desktop PCs in the first quarter of 2015.
The big news for Intel in Q2/2015 has been its announcement to buy Altera in an all-cash transaction valued at about $16.7 billion, Intel’s largest acquisition ever.
Intel plans to offer Altera’s FPGA products with its Xeon processors as “highly customized, integrated products” and to improve Altera’s products by applying Intel’s design and manufacturing processes to them.
4. Microsoft (-2)
Microsoft’s big news of the quarter was the announcement that the company would make Windows 10 ready for IoT.
Windows 10 would then be used as a developer tool for example for Raspberry Pi 2. The software giant announced a number of other devices that are designed to run on the company’s upcoming operating system.
On top of that, Microsoft and Japanese electronics giant Toshiba announced a new Internet of things (IoT) alliance.
5. Cisco (-2)
Cisco is finally making its IoT ambitions a reality. Some people had been wondering what all that Internet of Everything buzz was about at Cisco. In Q2 (and now in Q3), Cisco is making some things happen.
On June 30, Cisco Systems announced a $635 million all-cash buyout of cloud security company OpenDNS, in a move designed to boost Cisco’s position in the upcoming Internet of Things security market.
Furthermore Cisco introduced more than 15 new IoT products mainly centered around connectivity and cyber security solutions but also a product suite around fog data analytics.
Q2/2015: Other notable IoT companies
11. Ericsson (+10)
Ericsson has entered the top 20 IoT company ranking in Q2 because the Swedish company signed a couple of important partnerships in the IoT space in Q2 (SK Telecom, KT, LG, SaskTel)
14. Qualcomm (+8)
Leading mobile chipmaker Qualcomm recently provided guidance on how big the Internet of Things (IoT) sector is for the company. The company said it made $1 billion in revenue last year on chips used in a variety of city infrastructure projects, home appliance, cars and wearables. There were 120 million smart home devices, 20 million cars, and at least 20 types of wearable devices shipped with Qualcomm chips in the last year.
These numbers lift Qualcomm into the top 20 IoT companies.
18. Facebook (+32)
Everyone is waiting for Facebook to join the Internet of Things revolution. Facebook’s engagement in IoT remains a vague one but at least in Q2/2015, it has announced Parse for IoT , a Backend as a Service (BaaS) for microcontrollers and realtime operating systems (RTOS) . This little announcement has been enough to lift Facebook into the top 20 IoT company ranking.
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Great read, Knud!
I just posted an article about the race!
http://axendia.com/blog/2015/07/21/the-race-for-your-wrist-and-medical-data-is-happening-now/
I appreciate that. Thanks, Sandra.
The methods used for this research are flawed, leading to rankings that don’t match the reality of IoT. Of course there will be lots to of googling for Intel related to IoT, because people want to find out what Intel is doing in the space. This, by no stretch, means that Intel is in the top 5 companies in IoT. Microsoft, also, is a miniscule player. Facebook? Really? In what bizarro world?
IoT is dominated by companies like Atmel, Arduino, TI, and other manufacturers of microcontrollers, boards, and sensors. Not IBM. The back ends of virtually all consumer IoT run on Amazon AWS, with maybe a miniscule percentage using Microsoft Azure.
From the industrial side of IoT, companies like Bosch didn’t even make your list.
I am really shocked that a company whose name and sole purpose is IoT Analytics can produce such badly researched misinformation.
Dear David,
I appreciate controversial comments like yours, they help us understand our reader’s opinions and concerns.
First of all, regarding the overall methodology. It is certainly true that by screening Google searches or employees on Linkedin, the ranking will be only an indication of company activity, not necessarily the full reality. But in our mind it is currently the best method there is to bring some colour into the topic. As more and more companies report IoT revenues, we will start to include revenues and other indicators in our rankings. If you have further suggestions on what to measure, we would be happy to include that.
Regarding individual companies: I have to disagree on that one. IBM is making one of the biggest pushes of all companies into IoT. $3bn dollars and 1.4k employees is unparalleled. The type of things IBM does for IoT (mainly analytics, enterprise integration, etc.) is certainly as important as the work that semiconductor companies like Atmel are doing.
And Intel, the company is now reporting $2.1bn in IoT revenues (2014). That is incredible and shows that they are correctly placed in the top 5.
The companies you suggested are all in the top 50: https://iot-analytics.com/company-ranking/
Arduino: 26, Bosch 34, Atmel 46. What is your context/data to say that they are the leading companies?
We are aware that these companies are making good progress in IoT but we do not believe that a company that has maybe ~50 employees like Arduino be placed in front of a company that is dedicating more than 10x the workforce on the same topic. As Arduino grows, it will push its way into the top 20…
Thanks Knud for a wonderful article and ranking. Looking to get exposure in my stock portfolio with Internet of Things and have come down to InvenSense and Nordic Semiconductor. Are you still favorable on these companies? Thank so much again.
Cheers,Glenn
Hi Glenn,
unfortunately I do not think I am technically allowed to give recommendations on individual stocks. I do believe both InvenSense and Nordic are promising companies but I would also like to remind you that both are hardware companies and the profit pools (also for the Internet of Things) are more and more shifting to the software side of things. So you might want to consider some software/cloud focused providers of IoT solutions in your portfolio as well.
I hope that helps. Best,
Knud
Are you all doing this ranking again for 2016? If so, when?
I’m really surprised that ARM could not make into this list?
Why didn’t you take in consideration the Ericsson-Cisco partnership which would put Ericsson in a better standing IMO
I am not technically sound to comment. How ever most of the companies are abroad based. What about most popular Indian IT companies like infosys, TCS, etc.Clarify to upgrade my knowledge. Thanks.