As someone working on standards development in this area, I would point out that the proliferation of proprietary APIs and protocols are not caused by a desire to create lock-in in many cases. More often than not, the interfaces are proprietary because good standards simply don't exist to do what is required.
A large part of the problem often overlooked by the tech community is that none of the existing web standards are useful for the Internet of Things. It needs a new set of standards designed for the purpose so that applications can support the operations necessary at the throughput and operation rates required by IoT.
For example, something that comes up a lot at the standards meetings is representation of data. Formats like JSON and XML were fine for the web, but when you have to continuously parse a billion records every second the implied computational cost of just parsing using most existing standard formats is extraordinary. It shifts the economics such that computational efficiency becomes totally worth the implementation cost. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of existing standards that reflect the tradeoffs you see with IoT implementations.
A large part of the problem often overlooked by the tech community is that none of the existing web standards are useful for the Internet of Things. It needs a new set of standards designed for the purpose so that applications can support the operations necessary at the throughput and operation rates required by IoT.
For example, something that comes up a lot at the standards meetings is representation of data. Formats like JSON and XML were fine for the web, but when you have to continuously parse a billion records every second the implied computational cost of just parsing using most existing standard formats is extraordinary. It shifts the economics such that computational efficiency becomes totally worth the implementation cost. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of existing standards that reflect the tradeoffs you see with IoT implementations.