I'm not too big in this field but didn't many of those same IOT companies and the like struggle with the packages becoming dependent on Poeterings work since they often needed much smaller/minimal distros?
It's definitely pretty opinionated, and I frequently have to explain to people why "After=" doesn't mean "Wants=", but the result is way more robust than any alternative I'm familiar with.
If you're on a system so constrained that running systemd is a burden, you are probably already using something like buildroot/yocto and have a high degree of control about what init system you use.