Notes for Chapter 7

Mobile Commerce
M-commerce Value Chain, Revenue Models and Justification
Several types of vendors provide value-added services to m-commerce. These include
mobile-portals, advertisers, software vendors, content providers, mobile portal, mobile
network operators and more. The revenue models of m-commerce are: access fees,
subscription fees, pay-per use, advertising, transaction fees, hosting, payment clearing and
point-of-traffic.
Mobile technologies not only provide convenience and efficiency benefits, but can lead in
both core competencies and competitive advantage and impact entire strategies and business
models.
Wireless Local Area Networks and Wi-Fi
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is like a wired LAN without the cables. WLANs transmit and
receive data over the airwaves from a short distance in what is known as Wi-Fi.
Mobile Applications in Financial Services
Mobile Banking and Stock Trading: Mobile banking is generally defined as carrying out
banking transactions and other related activities via mobile devices.
Wireless Electronic Payment Systems: Wireless payment systems transform mobile phones
into secure, self-contained purchasing tools capable of instantly authorising payments over
the cellular network.
Micropayments: Electronic payments of small purchase amounts are called micropayments.
Mobile (Wireless) Wallets: An e-wallet is a piece of software that stores an online shoppers
credit card numbers and other personal information that the shopper does not have to re-enter
that information for every online purchase.
Mobile Shopping, Advertising & Content Providing
Shopping from Wireless Devices:
An increasing number of online vendors allow customers to shop from wireless devices. E.g.
mobile.yahoo.com
Target Advertising:
Knowing the current location of mobile users and their preferences or surfing habits,
marketers can send user-specific advertising messages to wireless devices.
Mobile Portals:
A mobile portal is a customer channel, optimized for mobility, that aggregates and provides
content and services for mobile users. E.g. zed.com
Voice portals:
A voice portal is a web site that can be accessed by voice. Voice portals are not really
websites in the normal sense because they are not accessed through a browser.

Location Based Services & Commerce

L-Commerce Technologies
Providing location-based services requires the following location based and network
technologies.
Position Determining Equipment (PDE): This equipment identifies the location of the
mobile device and the information is sent to the mobile positioning center.
Mobile Positioning Center: The MPC is a server that manages the location information sent
from the PDE.
Location-based Technology: This technology consists of groups of servers that combine the
position information with geographic- and location-specific content to provide an lcommerce service.
Geographic Content: Geographic content consists of digitized streets, road maps, addresses,
routes, landmarks, land usage, Zip codes and the like. It is provided via content centre.
Location-specific Content: Location-specific content is used in conjunction with geographic
content to provide the location of particular services.
Global Positioning System: A global positioning system is a wireless system that uses
satellites to enable users to determine where the GPS device is located anywhere on the earth.
Geographical Information System (GIS): The location by GPS is expressed in terms of
latitude and longitude. To make that information useful to businesses and consumers, it is
necessary in many cases to relate those measures to a certain place or address. This is done by
inserting the latitude and longitude onto a digital map, which is known as a geographic
information system (GIS).
Telematics & Telemetry: Telematics refers to the integration of computers and wireless
communications in order to improve information flow. It uses the principles of telemetry, the
science that measures physical remoteness by means of wireless transmission from a remote
source (such as a vehicle) to a receiving station.
Mobile Enterprise Applications
Mobile Apps include the following:
Supporting salespeople while they are waiting on customers
Supporting field employees doing repairs or maintenance on corporate premises or for
clients
Supporting executives, managers, or other employees when they are traveling or
otherwise not at the corporate site
Supporting employees while they do work inside the enterprise at places where there
is no easy access to desktop computers, for example, in a warehouse, at outdoor
facilities, or in large retail stores.
Supporting employees driving trucks while they are on the road.
Pervasive Computing
A world in which virtually every object has processing power with wireless or wired
connections to a global network is the world of pervasive computing. (The term pervasive

computing also goes by the names ubiquitous computing, embedded computing, or

augmented computing.)
Invisible Computing
RFID Tags
Active Badges
Memory Buttons
Contextual Computing
Context awareness is part of contextual computing, which refers to the enhancement of a
users interactions by understanding the user, the context, and the applications and
information being used, typically across a wide set of user goals. Contextual computing is
about actively adapting the computational environment for each user, at each point of
computing.
Inhibitors & Barriers of Mobile Computing
The usability problem

Ethical & legal issues

Failures in mobile-computing & mcommerce

Challenges in deploying ubiquitous
systems

Managerial Issues
Comparing wireless to synchronised mobile devices
Time-table
Setting application priority
Choosing a system
Reference for further study:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_commerce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_marketing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_web
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_payment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_ticketing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/POST-PN-263.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aura/docdir/pcs01.pdf