Mobile commerce: Framework, applications and networking support

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress towards strategies, requirements, and development of e-commerce applications. However, nearly all e-commerce applications envisioned and developed so far assume fixed or stationary users with wired infrastructure. We envision many new e-commerce applications that will be possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless and mobile networks. To allow designers, developers, and researchers to strategize and create mobile commerce applications, we propose a four-level integrated framework for mobile commerce. Since there are potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce applications, we attempt to identify several important classes of applications such as mobile financial applications, mobile inventory management, proactive service management, product location and search, and wireless re-engineering. We discuss how to successfully define, architect, and implement the necessary hardware/software infrastructure in support of mobile commerce. Also, to make mobile commerce applications a reality, we address networking requirements, discuss support from wireless carriers, and present some open research problems.