Microsoft has joined the AllSeen Alliance, a Qualcomm-backed Internet of Things consortium.
The software giant’s membership makes it a total of 51 companies in the group, including big names in electronics like LG, Sharp and Panasonic. Besides consumer electronics manufacturers, AllSeen members include home appliance makers, automotive companies, IoT cloud providers, chipset manufacturers, service providers, retailers and software developers.
AllSeen are working on a universal IoT standard based on Qualcomm’s AllJoyn open source code.
The Alliance says AllJoyn “allows devices to autonomously discover and interact with nearby products regardless of their underlying proprietary technology or communications protocols.”
“Microsoft’s strong presence in the home via computers, tablets, phones, gaming platforms and their strength in the consumer, enterprise, education, industrial automotive sectors, uniquely enables them to accelerate the adoption of the AllSeen Alliance’s AllJoyn open source code across a very wide swath of products and verticals,” Liat Ben-Zur, Chairman of the AllSeen Alliance, said in a statement.
As the IoT market is set to expand, competing chipmakers aren’t sitting on their hands as Qualcomm assembles its alliance. Reuters said that a rival IoT standards consortium to AllSeen could be announced as early as next week.
At stake as companies choose sides is an IoT market with huge revenue potential. IDC in October 2013 forecast the worldwide market for IoT solutions to grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.
