Design and evaluation of m-commerce applications

Recent advances in wireless technology have increased the number of mobile device users and given pace to the rapid development and deployment of e-commerce to the mobile user. This new type of e-commerce, conducting transactions via mobile terminals, is called mobile commerce (m-commerce). Due to its inherent characteristics such as ubiquity, personalization, flexibility, and dissemination, mobile commerce promises business unprecedented market potential, greater productivity and higher profitability. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that mobile commerce is growing much faster than its fixed counterpart. Unlike c-commerce, m-commerce is more personalized and there is a need for a novel approach to evaluating m-commerce applications. This paper examines the issues in designing m-commerce applications not only from a technical viewpoint but also from the end users' perspective. Firstly, the enabling m-commerce technologies are presented, viz.: Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and i-mode mobile Internet service. Two m-commerce application scenarios are then illustrated by making use of the simulation software, Nokia toolkit version 4.0. Then results from the authors' on-line market research into user preferences are presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn on the future directions in wireless and mobile Internet service provision.