Page 31 - Unleashing the potenti al of the Internet of Things

Unleashing the potential of the Internet of Things 1

I.1.4 Application provider

The application provider utilizes capabilities or resources provided by the network provider, device
provider and platform provider, in order to provide IoT applications to application customers.

I.1.5 Application customer
The application customer is the user of IoT application(s) provided by the application provider.

NOTE – An application customer may represent multiple applications users.

I.2 Business models
The IoT ecosystem players may have a variety of relationships in real deployments.

The motivations for this variety of relationships are based on different possible business models.
This appendix examines only some IoT business models from the perspective of telecom service
and network operators. From this perspective, five business models are described below.

I.2.1 Model 1
In model 1, player A operates the device, network, platform and applications and serves the
application customer directly, as shown in Figure I.2.

In general, telecom operators and some vertically integrated businesses (such as smart grid and
intelligent transport systems (ITS) businesses) act as player A in model 1.

Figure I.2 – Model 1
I.2.2 Model 2

In model 2, player A operates the device, network, and platform, and player B operates the
application and serves the application customers, as shown in Figure I.3.

In general, telecom operators act as player A, other service providers as player B in model 2.

Figure I.3 – Model 2

Rec. ITU-T Y.4000/Y.2060 (06/2012) 17