Bosch Named 2019 Asia Pacific IoT Vendor of the Year

“Bosch’s open and considered approach to IoT sets it apart from its competitors. If its current market performance is any guide, Bosch’s years of foundational work in specific IoT verticals place it in good stead for future cross‑domain growth and expansion.”
— Frost & Sullivan, 2019 Asia Pacific Best Practices Awards.

The Asia Pacific region is one of the fastest‑growing IoT markets globally, projected to account for nearly 40 % of the worldwide market by 2025. As international vendors converge with regional solution providers, competition in APAC intensifies. Bosch, however, has consistently embraced this challenge. With IoT as a core focus, the company has invested heavily in understanding customer pain points, developing tailored IoT technologies, and assembling a skilled team to deploy them. These efforts have translated into significant market adoption and, most recently, recognition from industry experts. In August 2019, analyst firm Frost & Sullivan awarded Bosch.IO (formerly Bosch Software Innovations) the title of “2019 Asia Pacific IoT Vendor of the Year.”

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan is a leading global technology analyst firm, established in 1961. Renowned for guiding investors, corporate leaders, and governments through economic shifts and disruptive technologies, the firm operates from its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, and maintains 40 offices across six continents.

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Vendor of the Year: Evaluation Criteria

The Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards honor companies that excel in leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Analysts benchmark vendors through in‑depth interviews, rigorous analysis, and extensive secondary research. A key component of the selection process is customer feedback: decision makers in client organizations are surveyed to identify the industry leaders they trust.

In a congratulatory letter, David Frigstad, Chairman of Frost & Sullivan, noted, “Our global teams of analysts identify companies that are true industry leaders—those with a clear vision of the future, driving innovation before it becomes mainstream, and often being first to market with new solutions.”

Key award criteria include visionary innovation & performance and customer impact. Bosch.IO was recognized for its open‑source and open‑standards strategy and for delivering end‑to‑end IoT solutions that meet APAC customers’ specific needs.

Visionary Innovation & Performance: Advocating Open Source and Open Standards

Central to Bosch’s IoT philosophy is the belief that “no one can do IoT alone.” The company argues that shared standards and open source are essential for ensuring interoperability across platforms and accelerating adoption. Open source provides free, innovative technology that encourages experimentation and rapid prototyping, fostering a collaborative ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders.

From the outset, Bosch.IO has championed the open IoT ecosystem, holding leadership roles in the OSGi Alliance, Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC), Trusted IoT Alliance, and Eclipse Foundation. The firm actively contributes to numerous Eclipse IoT projects and integrates these technologies into its own Bosch IoT Suite platform.

Frost & Sullivan highlights that this open‑ecosystem approach eliminates vendor lock‑in, enabling customers to shape future IoT developments and influencing the direction of the industry. By collaborating with other leaders, Bosch accelerates innovation and enhances DevOps quality.

Customer Impact: Focus on the Asia Pacific Region

Unlike many global firms that centralize solution development, Bosch.IO has crafted many of its offerings directly in the APAC region. Notable examples include Secure Product Fingerprint, a counterfeiting‑mitigation solution launched in China earlier this year, and Lift Manager, a lift‑monitoring and maintenance‑optimization solution already installed in hundreds of Singaporean elevators. Frost & Sullivan emphasized that Bosch.IO is recognized in APAC for tailoring solutions to local markets.

Thomas Jakob, Regional President of Bosch.IO in APAC, explains, “We focus on productizing solutions rather than executing one‑off IoT projects. By creating standardized, affordable, and easy‑to‑deploy offerings, we help make IoT mainstream for a broader range of regional—and ultimately global—customers.”

Recently, Bosch expanded its IoT consulting portfolio across APAC, launching workshops and training sessions in China, Singapore, and India. These programs covered topics from designing new IoT business models to developing applications, targeting business owners and software developers alike. In 2018, the company also established an IoT Services Delivery Center in Nanjing, China, to support regional adoption.

Jakob added, “At Bosch.IO, we built a dedicated team of consultants, developers, solution architects, product managers, and professional services specialists to deliver end‑to‑end IoT solutions based on the Bosch IoT Suite across APAC. The market’s recognition of this effort is a testament to our commitment.”

Benchmarking Principles

For the Company of the Year Award, three leading vendors were selected from an initial long list. They were then evaluated on two key dimensions: Visionary Innovation & Performance and Customer Impact, each assessed against specific criteria. Frost & Sullivan used a customized Decision Support Scorecard—a 10‑point scale—to capture nuanced performance differences.

Visionary Innovation & Performance

• Addressing Unmet Needs
• Visionary Scenarios through Mega Trends
• Implementation Best Practices
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Financial Performance

Customer Impact

• Price/Performance Value
• Customer Purchase Experience
• Customer Ownership Experience
• Customer Service Experience
• Brand Equity

Illustrations of the Decision Support Scorecard and resulting positioning matrix are provided by Frost & Sullivan (see images below). The tool helps analysts visualize which vendors are truly breakthrough and which are still developing best‑in‑class capabilities.