The application marketplaces in the smart phone ecosystem are fostering open innovation by incentivizing developers to create software applications. These application marketplaces play the role of unified channels for distribution of third party innovation artifacts such as software applications. Although the vision of the Internet of Things has existed over a decade, the distribution channels for third party applications are still at an early stage of development. In this paper we draw an analogy between the smart phone application marketplaces and the existing similar trends in the Internet of Things. We present a review of Internet of Things application platforms with an attempt to identify the common ground for the creation of Internet of Things application marketplaces. Based on the observations from the review we identify the general trends followed by the Internet of Things platforms and propose a general design intended to shape the realization of application marketplaces fostering open innovation for Internet of Things.

1. Toward Internet of Things
Application Markets
Dejan MUNJIN Jean-Henry MORIN
Institute of Services Science Institute of Services Science
University of Geneva University of Geneva
Dejan.Munjin@unige.ch Jean-Henry.Morin@unige.ch

2. Outline
• Motivation and Problem Statement
• Related Work
• Review of Software Application Platforms
• Proposition – Toward IoT Application Market
• Ongoing and Future Work
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3. Application Markets – Smart Phone
• Cloud based service
• Hardware - dependent applications
• Large number of users and
Hardware performances
• Metrics on 14/11/2012:
Apple AppStore 727,938
Google PlayStore 558,065
• Plethora of applications
and services
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4. Application Markets - IoT
• IoT is following
1 sensor 1 application model
• Goal :
Marketplace – many things – many apps
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5. Problem Statement
Problem
Internet of Things has a limited number of application marketplaces and
therefore low number of applications/services
• Study: IoT objects -> Data -> Application marketplace
• Aim: Empower developers, third party firms, and users to distribute the
software applications for IoT
• Contribution: Identified challenges and proposed design elements for
realizing the IoT application marketplaces
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6. Motivation for Application Market
• Application market: empowers participants in the ecosystem
• “When successful, these platforms catalyze a virtuous cycle: More
demand from one user group spurs more from the other.”
• Eisenmann, T., G. Parker, and M.W. Van Alstyne, Strategies for Two-Sided Markets. Harvard Business Review, 2006. 84(10): p. 92- 101.
Users Developers
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7. Related Works
• Related works: Kortuem, G. and F. Kawsar. Market-based user innovation in the Internet of
Things. in Internet of Things (IOT), 2010.
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8. IoT Application Platforms: Review
• A plethora of hardware:
Tags: NFC, RFID
“Smart” objects: smart phones, smart sensors, smart cars, smart homes…
• Increased problem of targeting platform for software development
• Limited computational power for some devices or even inexistent (tags
or some sensors)
• Review of 14 providers (hardware and/or software) such as
pachube, bugswarm, evrythng etc.
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9. Hardware Platforms Review
• Review:
only the hardware that can provide platform for software applications
software libraries are excluded
commercial hardware provided by hardware manufacturer
open source hardware intended for DIY
Hardware IoT Vendor Third party
platforms applications applications
Open source 3 236 *
Commercial 11 11
*Bugswarm: 236 third party applications
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10. Software Platforms Review
• Review:
only the cloud based services that provide platform for software
applications
software libraries are excluded
IoT Vendor Third party
applications applications
Cloud based platforms
15 325 *
*IoBridge: 256 application widgets
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11. Review Analysis
• Lack of software applications particularly for hardware
• Open source hardware generally don’t create application market for
software applications
• Successful examples like Bugswarm
• Cloud based services – predominance of personalization widgets
• Emergence of “Data brokerage” platforms that connect heterogeneous
hardware and share the data
• Common ground for IoT application market: “Data brokerage” platforms
• SaaS instead of hardware dependent applications
• We need application markets as distribution channels for software
applications
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12. Proposition
• Virtual Thing – virtual proxy to physical connectable objects
• Data Brokerage Platform – cloud based infrastructure designed to collect
the data from things and to share the data trough the virtual things
• Application Store – registry of available applications
• Application market – platform for exchange of (third party) software
applications
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13. Architecture
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14. Design Challenges
• Core services exposed on data brokerage platform (overlay) : design
according to developers’ incentives to enable devices for IoT.
Semantic for virtual things: identification, content, position, environment
etc.
• Managing the compatibility of virtual things with the applications:
providing developers with a possibility to target virtual things with their
applications
• Middleware: communication protocols e.g. HTTP, Socket, MQTT, etc
• Data Protection manager: clear policies for retention, management and
distribution of digital information (e.g., Privacy, etc.)
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15. Ongoing and Future Work
• Finalizing technical challenges and requirements
• Implementation of the proposed model for application market:
http://apps.thingvibe.com
(first functional prototype due by end of December 2012)
• Survey study with IoT developers
• Part of PhD research “User Empowerment in the Internet of Things”
• Future work: “ThingBook” : the “facebook “ of things – Socialization of
Things
• More detailed review of IoT platforms available at:
http://thingvibe.net/2012/iot/iot-state-of-the-art/
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16. Thank you
Thank you
Questions and answers
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