Last month we ran 200 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity — each one asking about IoT products, platforms, or solutions. We tracked which of 50 IoT brands appeared in the responses, how they were described, and whether the AI recommended them or just mentioned them in passing.
The results surprised us. Not because the big names dominated — we expected that. But because the gap between the top tier and everyone else was so extreme it looked like two completely different markets.
Here's the full breakdown.
Methodology: How We Ran This Study
We selected 50 IoT brands across four verticals: smart home (15 brands), industrial IoT (12 brands), healthcare IoT (11 brands), and wearables (12 brands). The brands ranged from household names like Nest and Siemens to well-funded challengers like Aqara and Ecobee.
For each vertical, we crafted 50 prompts — a mix of product recommendations, comparison queries, "best of" lists, troubleshooting questions, and ecosystem-planning scenarios. That gave us 200 prompts total, each fired at all four AI engines.
We scored every response on three dimensions:
- Mention rate — What percentage of responses included the brand?
- Recommendation strength — Was the brand actively recommended or just name-dropped?
- Sentiment — Was the description positive, neutral, or negative?
Every response was manually reviewed. No automation on the scoring side. We wanted to catch nuances that a keyword-matching script would miss.
The Smart Home Vertical: Google and Amazon Own the Conversation
Smart home was the most competitive vertical and the most predictable. Here are the top 10 brands by visibility score (out of 100):
- Google Nest — 87/100
- Ring (Amazon) — 82/100
- Philips Hue — 78/100
- ecobee — 61/100
- TP-Link Kasa — 58/100
- Wyze — 54/100
- Aqara — 41/100
- Honeywell Home — 39/100
- Lutron — 34/100
- SimpliSafe — 29/100
Nest and Ring appeared in over 80% of smart home responses. Not surprising — they have massive brand awareness, extensive third-party coverage, and deep integration with the two dominant voice ecosystems.
What was surprising: ecobee outperformed TP-Link despite being a much smaller company. When we dug into the responses, ecobee consistently appeared in energy-efficiency and thermostat-specific queries. Its positioning was razor-sharp — AI engines knew exactly what ecobee does and when to recommend it.
TP-Link's Kasa line, despite having a broader product catalog, often got generic descriptions. The AI seemed uncertain about whether TP-Link was primarily a networking company or a smart home company.
Aqara was the biggest surprise. A Chinese brand with limited US marketing presence scored 41/100. Why? Aqara has cultivated a strong presence in smart home enthusiast communities, review sites, and YouTube teardowns. AI engines picked up on that concentrated authority in the enthusiast segment.
The bottom five brands in smart home — including two with over $100M in annual revenue — scored below 20. They had products on Best Buy shelves but were functionally invisible in AI conversations.
Industrial IoT: Siemens Dominates, Cloud Platforms Surge
Industrial IoT showed the most dramatic concentration we've seen in any vertical:
- Siemens (MindSphere/Xcelerator) — 91/100
- AWS IoT — 85/100
- Microsoft Azure IoT — 83/100
- PTC (ThingWorx) — 68/100
- Honeywell Forge — 59/100
- Rockwell Automation — 52/100
- GE Digital — 48/100
- Bosch IoT — 43/100
- Hitachi Vantara — 37/100
- Cisco IoT — 35/100
Siemens was mentioned in 91% of industrial IoT queries — the highest single-brand score in our entire study. The AI engines consistently positioned Siemens as the default recommendation for manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure use cases.
The cloud platforms (AWS IoT, Azure IoT) scored high not because of IoT-specific authority but because they inherit the trust of their parent platforms. When someone asks about an IoT solution for a factory, AI engines default to the cloud platforms they already trust for everything else.
PTC ThingWorx was the standout performer relative to its brand size. PTC has invested heavily in technical content, AR/IoT integration narratives, and analyst-facing materials. That content showed up in AI responses as specific, authoritative recommendations — not just brand mentions.
The invisible middle in IIoT was particularly painful. Brands like Particle, Losant, and Samsara — all strong products with real enterprise customers — scored below 25. Their positioning was too niche for general IIoT queries, but they weren't appearing in the specific niche queries either.
Healthcare IoT: A Fragmented Landscape
Healthcare IoT was the most fragmented vertical. No single brand dominated the way Siemens does in industrial:
- Medtronic — 72/100
- Abbott — 68/100
- Dexcom — 65/100
- Philips (Connected Care) — 61/100
- Withings — 53/100
- Masimo — 42/100
- Biobeat — 31/100
- BioIntellisense — 27/100
- Current Health — 23/100
- Vivify Health — 19/100
The top three brands (Medtronic, Abbott, Dexcom) benefited from heavy clinical evidence and FDA-clearance documentation in their AI responses. AI engines consistently mentioned regulatory status when recommending healthcare IoT — a pattern we didn't see in any other vertical.
Withings was fascinating. It bridges consumer and clinical, and AI engines reflected that duality. In consumer queries ("best health tracking watch"), Withings competed with Apple Watch and Fitbit. In clinical queries ("remote patient monitoring devices"), it appeared alongside Medtronic and Abbott. That cross-category visibility is rare and valuable.
The bottom half of healthcare IoT brands suffered from a specific problem: their products were described accurately but never recommended. AI would say "BioIntellisense offers a wearable biosensor" but wouldn't suggest it as a solution. Accurate description without recommendation is almost worse than invisibility — it means the AI knows about you but doesn't trust you enough to recommend you.
Wearables: Apple Isn't Competing — It's in a Different League
We almost didn't include Apple Watch in the wearables vertical because it distorted every chart:
- Apple Watch — 94/100
- Fitbit (Google) — 79/100
- Garmin — 76/100
- Samsung Galaxy Watch — 71/100
- Whoop — 58/100
- Oura — 55/100
- Amazfit — 38/100
- Polar — 34/100
- Coros — 31/100
- Suunto — 28/100
Apple Watch appeared in 94% of wearable queries. That's not a visibility score — that's a monopoly on AI mindshare. Every "best smartwatch" query led with Apple Watch. Every "health tracking wearable" query mentioned it. Even queries specifically about non-Apple alternatives often started with "If you're looking for an alternative to Apple Watch..."
Whoop and Oura were the positioning success stories. Neither tries to be a general smartwatch. Whoop owns "performance recovery" and Oura owns "sleep tracking." When queries got specific — "best wearable for sleep" or "recovery tracking for athletes" — they jumped to the top of responses. Clear positioning creates clear AI recommendations.
Amazfit, despite selling millions of units globally, scored just 38. High market share doesn't automatically translate to AI visibility. Amazfit's value proposition (affordable smartwatches) didn't generate the kind of expert coverage and comparison content that AI engines rely on.
Cross-Vertical Findings: The IoT AI Visibility Pyramid
Looking at all 50 brands together, a clear pattern emerged. We're calling it the IoT AI Visibility Pyramid:
Tier 1: AI Default (Score 75-100) — 8 brands
These brands are the automatic first answer. They appear whether or not the query is specifically about them. Google Nest, Siemens, Apple Watch, AWS IoT — they've transcended their product category to become synonymous with the category itself.
Tier 2: AI Recommended (Score 50-74) — 12 brands
These brands appear frequently and get positive recommendations, but they're never the first answer. They're the "also consider" brands. ecobee, PTC, Dexcom, Whoop — strong in their niche but not dominant.
Tier 3: AI Aware (Score 25-49) — 16 brands
The AI knows they exist and can describe them accurately, but rarely recommends them. These brands have the most to gain from GEO optimization — the knowledge base is there, the recommendation just isn't being triggered.
Tier 4: AI Invisible (Score 0-24) — 14 brands
These brands either don't appear at all or appear so rarely that it's essentially noise. Several of these brands have $50M+ in revenue. They're not invisible because they're small — they're invisible because their digital presence doesn't match what AI engines need to build confidence.
The Brand Concentration Problem
Here's the number that should worry every IoT brand outside the top tier: the top 5 brands in each vertical captured between 62% and 78% of all AI mentions. In industrial IoT, the top 3 alone captured 71%.
This concentration is more extreme than Google search. In traditional SEO, a smaller brand could target long-tail keywords and win niche traffic. In AI conversations, the engine tends to recommend the same handful of brands regardless of how specific the query gets.
The exceptions — Aqara in smart home, Whoop in wearables, Dexcom in healthcare — prove that this pattern can be broken. But it requires deliberate positioning and concentrated authority-building in a specific niche.
Which AI Engines Favor Which Brands?
We found notable differences between engines:
- ChatGPT favored established consumer brands. Nest, Ring, and Apple Watch scored highest here.
- Claude gave the most balanced recommendations and was most likely to mention mid-tier brands. It also provided the most detailed pros/cons analysis.
- Gemini skewed toward Google ecosystem products (unsurprisingly). Nest scored 15 points higher on Gemini than on any other engine.
- Perplexity cited the most sources and was most likely to recommend newer brands that had strong review coverage.
If you're a challenger brand, Claude and Perplexity are your best entry points. If you're an established brand, ChatGPT and Gemini are reinforcing your position.
What the Invisible Brands Have in Common
The 14 brands that scored below 25 shared these characteristics:
- Vague positioning — Their websites said things like "comprehensive IoT solutions for modern enterprises"
- Minimal third-party coverage — Few reviews, comparisons, or expert mentions outside their own marketing
- Inconsistent messaging — Different descriptions across their website, LinkedIn, G2 profile, and partner pages
- No differentiation narrative — Nothing that made them distinctly different from the next brand
Not a single brand in the invisible tier had a clear, specific positioning statement that a human could repeat from memory.
What Should IoT Brands Do With This Data?
If you're in Tier 1 or 2, your strategy is defensive — monitor for changes, ensure consistency, and watch for challengers moving up. You can check your current AI visibility score at geobuddy.co/check to get a baseline.
If you're in Tier 3, you're sitting on a massive opportunity. The AI already knows about you. You need to give it reasons to recommend you. That means sharper positioning, more third-party validation, and consistent messaging across every platform.
If you're in Tier 4, you need a fundamental rethink of your digital presence. Not more ads. Not more press releases. A ground-up strategy for making your brand understandable and trustworthy to AI engines.
The IoT market isn't getting less competitive. But the playing field where competition happens is shifting. The brands that recognize this shift and act on it will own the next decade of IoT growth. The ones that don't will keep wondering why their pipeline is drying up despite having a great product.
Originally published on GeoBuddy Blog.
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