How the Smartphone Era Led to the Death of Open Standards

[Commentary] We can thank the near universal adoption of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for the explosion of devices that can talk to each other, no wires required. The dream of being able to control our worlds from a smartphone (or smartwatch) makes progress with every new smart lock, fitness wearable, food freshness monitor, and car status tracker. But the dream is incomplete. What we’re evolving towards is a sea full of islands -- gadgets that can communicate back to a smartphone but have little awareness of each other. There have been several attempts to bridge them, including APIs, a few hubs aimed at enthusiasts, and the service IFTTT. But overall, connectivity remains fractured, and there's no reason to think that an industry-wide standard will fix things anytime soon.

We’re too early in the development of Internet of Things standards to known what impact Apple’s and Google’s initiatives will have. But if smartphones define the post-PC era, the Internet of Things may come to define a more disparate, decentralized post-smartphone era. Smartphones will still play a role -- just as PCs continue to matter -- but it wouldn’t be a central one from which the dominant companies can dictate standards. That would give industry groups the opportunity to build bridges between at least some of the islands that the smartphone era is creating.

[Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research]