Toward Internet of Things Application Markets

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.