Challenges in M-Commerce

Abstract

E-commerce activity is growing exponentially, and it is revolutionizing the way that businesses are run. In Asia, there is now an explosion of mobile wireless services. The number of 3G users in Korea has surpassed 1 million while in Japan it has grown from 50,000 in 2001 to 2 million in 2003. Mobile e-commerce (m-commerce) makes business mobility a reality; mobile users can access the Internet at any time, from anywhere and from their shirt pockets/purses using ubiquitous inexpensive computing infrastructure. It is estimated that the m-commerce market will grow to over USD200 billion by 2005 (Abbott, 2002). There are many definitions of m-commerce. One definition consists of all or part of mobile wireless services ranging from mobile phone networks to wireless local area networks. However, the service provided by mobile phone systems has achieved huge success. Mobile phone users originate from all walks of life and include almost all age groups, from teenagers to retired people. It creates a new method of personal communication without location constraints. Instead of briefly describing all mobile wireless services, we will concentrate on the mobile phone and PDA related to mobile telecommunication. Hence, m-commerce is defined as electronic commerce carried out in handheld devices such as the mobile phone and PDA through a mobile telecommunication network.