Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel, Cisco, Samsung, others form Internet of Things standards group Open Connectivity Foundation
Microsoft, Qualcomm And Intel Start Playing Nice On ‘Internet Of Things’ Standards — Chip making rivals Intel and Qualcomm want to finally play nice in the “Internet of Things.”
Context & Ripple Effects
This is a consolidation moment for a fragmented standards landscape. The Open Interconnect Consortium had already published its open-source IoTivity framework as the base for its spec, and this expansion into the Open Connectivity Foundation — adding Microsoft, Samsung and Cisco alongside founders Intel and Qualcomm — turns that working group into an industry-wide body. Qualcomm arrives with credentials from both sides of the aisle, having joined the rival Thread Group's board months earlier.
The significance is competitive positioning rather than pure altruism: Microsoft had already been opening its IoT stack by publishing its APIs on Ubuntu Core with Amazon, so joining a cross-vendor foundation extends that platform-neutral play to the connectivity layer where Intel and Qualcomm's chips actually ship.
First-order effects
- Device makers evaluating IoT specs get one broad coalition spanning chips (Intel, Qualcomm), devices (Samsung), cloud (Microsoft) and networking (Cisco), reducing the cost of betting on the wrong standard.
- Qualcomm now sits inside two competing camps at once — the Thread Group board seat and the OCF — hedging its position whichever protocol wins.
Second-order effects
- Rival alliances are forced to respond in kind: Thread and other consortia must broaden membership or merge specs, since a foundation backed by most major silicon and device vendors raises the price of staying siloed.
- Security becomes the next differentiator once connectivity is standardized — a gap Cisco moved to fill a year later by co-founding the blockchain-based IoT security alliance.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward pre-competitive coalitions as the default structure for hardware markets: the same dynamic reappeared when AMD, ARM, Qualcomm and IBM agreed on a coherent interconnect, suggesting rivals increasingly compete above the shared layer rather than below it.
- If interoperability becomes table stakes, value migrates from owning the spec to implementing it fastest — which is why IBM's later decision to open source Power processor technology for IoT makers reads as the same race run from the silicon side.
The trend: IoT is consolidating from warring proprietary protocols toward cross-vendor foundations, with interoperability shifting the moat from controlling the standard to shipping it first.