Internet of things standards: who stands out from the crowd?

While time-to-market constraints are accelerating the deployment of a variety of fragmented and proprietary IoT products, there is still a lack of understanding of what an IoT service is meant to be, what its consequences are, and how to promote standard IoT services. This article gives a concise but comprehensive survey of IoT service definition, regulation, and standardization activities. We discuss mainstream standards as well as emerging, independent, and state-funded projects.