10 IoT CEOs Laughing Loudest all the Way to the Bank
You likely won’t be able to guess which ten Internet of Things leaders earn the biggest paychecks.
April 11, 2017
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GE makes an array of industrial things that spin, spanning everything from aircraft engines to MRI machines to windmills. Furthermore, its Predix is setting the standard for how Industrial IoT devices like turbines and pumps—manufactured by both itself and others—talk to each other. Yet poor Jeff is in the last spot.
Your cable box is an exemplary IoT device. It has an IP address, enabling it to be accessed and programmed remotely. Comcast commands 22.4% of the U.S. market. What you might not know is that it is also the largest pay TV provider worldwide. It is, however, facing stiff competition from satellite providers like DirectTV, as well as Time Warner Cable.
Starting out as an emergency response system, OnStar has now evolved to where it gives car owners unlimited 4G LTE data for just $20 a month. General Motors will become even more of an IoT company once it ships its autonomous cars, and integrates IBM Watson fully into its driver experience.
Time Warner Cable owns 11% of the U.S. market share—half of Comcast’s 22.4%. Things will change dramatically though now that AT&T has acquired it, in an $85.4 billion merger that will create a behemoth capable of creating media and distributing it across all channels, from print to TV, to movie theaters, to mobile.
While most of us think of thermostats when we think of Honeywell, the company is an industrial giant that produces everything from gasoline and diesel car turbochargers to airplane cockpit electronics. As a matter of fact, to sell you on its latest connected thermostat, they tell you it was made by the company that helped put a man on the moon!
Here again is another company that does not immediately scream IoT. That said, they have invested a lot of time and money into a partnership with IBM Watson, to create Einstein, an AI system that uses advanced image analysis to automate inventory and ordering for retailers like Coca-Cola.
Darth Vader he is not, since the $1-billion Magic Band system makes a visit to Disneyland even more of a dream. Band on hand, you can unlock your room, schedule rides in advance, and pay for merchandise and food. And since your location and spending are being tracked continuously, upsells are a piece of cake. Evil or magic? You decide.
First Data processes electronic payments, in a similar fashion to Visa and Mastercard. Recently though, it has partnered with real-world IoT specialist Cisco Jasper to enable merchants using its Clover systems to offer customers the ability to process payments anywhere.
When you think of Oracle, you don’t think of an IoT device, like your connected washing machine. You think database. But hold on: where does the IoT data from tens of millions of IoT devices worldwide go? Into a database.
While technically both she and Mark Hurd are tied for first position, being Co-CEOs of Oracle, we gave her the top spot, because she beat the odds. Not only is she currently the highest paid female CEO in the U.S., but she’s also an immigrant, moving here with her parents from Israel at the tender age of 6. So, young girls everywhere: study hard and come to America!
While technically both she and Mark Hurd are tied for first position, being Co-CEOs of Oracle, we gave her the top spot, because she beat the odds. Not only is she currently the highest paid female CEO in the U.S., but she’s also an immigrant, moving here with her parents from Israel at the tender age of 6. So, young girls everywhere: study hard and come to America!
By Adam Gabriel
It’s no surprise that Disney CEO Robert Iger commands a multi-million dollar paycheck. After all, not only does he oversee Disney resorts across the world, the company’s famed films, but also the recently added Star Wars franchise—a brand worth billions on its own. It turns out that a galaxy far, far way can be had for $4 billion—what Disney paid to acquire Lucasfilm, which created the iconic movie franchise, in what has been called the deal of the century. So just like Darth Vader, Lord Iger holds dominion over a vast empire. But why mention Disney in an article describing the top-paid Internet of Things CEOs? Read on.
The slideshow below details the ten top-paid CEOs running businesses with significant IoT operations. On the list, you’ll find companies you expected, like GM, with its OnStar system installed in all its cars, or Industrial Internet evangelist GE. But do you know about First Data, and how it relates to the Internet of Things? Or where its CEO, Frank Bisignano, ranks on the list?
To assemble at our slideshow, we relied on publicly available information, such as this list from The New York Times, to which we applied research, and selected only those companies where IoT plays a sizable role in their business. Our resulting list is presented in ascending order and is rife with surprises beyond what we’ve already mentioned. For example, Jeff Immelt makes less than all the rest, despite GE’s huge presence not just in Industrial IoT, but his personal role in developing that business.
So who’s in the top spot? It’s probably not a person you’d expect. And it’s a woman. Yes, there is hope for equal pay.
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