Not sure why one precludes the other--in fact that's one of the reasons that IOTA is being looked at by Corporations, because many aspects of the IOT are still unsolved problems.
If you're talking about the difficulty of getting small devices exchanging value and data, that's where most of the work is being done. Data Market place is the proof of concept that you can get small sensors communicating data and have that data exchanged for value.
I get that - it seems like a moonshot that if successful will be massively important. It's just not clear that the tech can actually work at this point.