Network Analysis of Platform Ecosystems: The Case of Internet of Things Ecosystem

Software platform providers are often seen as the cornerstone of their business ecosystem, where the other ecosystem players utilize the platform’s standardized components together with complementary components for making applications. These platforms are also becoming a cornerstone of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) business ecosystem comprised of the companies who provide Internet-enabled devices, applications, connectivity solutions, and the platforms for the IoT usage. While a number of enabling technologies for IoT is available, the question remains what kind of ecosystem emerges around IoT platform providers and whether this ecosystem is evolving in line with the theoretical models describing business ecosystem development. In order to address this question, we constructed a network model for the IoT ecosystem and considered how it had changed over the period of a year and a half. Our findings indicate that the ecosystem is still in early evolutionary phase, although some signs of consolidation are starting to appear. A mainstream solution is still missing and many vendors are trying to make their platform a dominating one.