[0] https://golioth.io/

Perhaps with a concrete example with and without your product.

Because these companies are almost universally not very good at software (bad UI/UX, weird bespoke SDKs, lots of proprietary components, etc.), there's a lot of wheel reinvention, integration issues, etc. And the worst is that non of this stuff delivers any value until you build typically very bespoke services on top of this stuff. The software they ship is effectively low level middleware: a necessary evil that the end user doesn't care about.

In my view, what's lacking here is good Open Source components and standardized protocols. And out of the box software experiences that deliver true value using those. Companies seem to be defaulting to building walled gardens and low level SDKs. And they just aren't very good at it. It's a mess of low quality, low level software, and a lot of messy integration projects. You can't order any of this stuff on Amazon and expect it to be plug and play.

Ironically, the home automation market is much more mature than the industry is at this point. You even have some interoperability for devices, protocols, etc. and some pretty decent open integration platforms, slick mobile applications, etc.. That does not exist for large scale industrial/business usage outside a few narrow verticals/niches (e.g. fire alarms, agv tracking in automotive, etc.). Consumers are much more critical and less forgiving than companies when it comes to buying stuff. If it doesn't work, they'll return it.

Something like Apple Airtag is science fiction for asset tracking in an industrial context. It simply does not exist in a usable form. A polished easy to use end user experience that works out of the box. It's easier to track your luggage than it is to track expensive machinery across a supply chain.

The widespread software incompetence is holding back the IOT industry as a whole. They all talk big about topics like ESG, energy savings, smart buildings, fancy tracking, etc. But when you pick it apart it's a bunch of chips in a fugly 3d printed housing with some MQTT and Grafana on the side. They throw it over the fence with some proprietary SDK. And good luck building anything that does anything useful. You are typically looking at expensive integrations and consulting projects. Just to connect some hardware thingies to some ERP thingies.

We're trying to fix this in our company; just so we can remove the friction of getting companies started with our software solutions. It's hard poking through all the BS in this industry.