In the last decade the sol-gel process became a promising method to synthesize materials in form of coatings, nanoscale powders and porous systems. The technique has been mainly used at laboratory scale and has brought interesting contributions for the development of new nanomaterials. Nevertheless, several products or devices made with such a process already exist and new ones should be available in the market in the near future. This paper briefly reviews the state of the art in the development of electrochromic (EC) coatings and devices, batteries, nanocrystalline solar cells and in the field of catalysis achieved during the last decade using sol-gel derived pure and doped niobium pentoxide.