Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

INTRODUCTION

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in progress

towards strategies, requirements and development of e-

commerce application. Nearly all the e-commerce

applications envisioned so far assume fixed or stationary

users with wired infrastructure, such as a browser on PC

connected to the internet using phone lines on LAN.

Many people do not use a PC outside the office, but

keep the mobile phone at their side all the times. Mobile

commerce is perfect for this group.

M-commerce allows one to reach the consumer

directly, not his fax machine, his desk, his secretary or his

mailbox, but ones consumer directly, regardless of where

he is.

M-commerce is “the delivery of electronic commerce

capabilities directly into the hands, anywhere, via wireless

technology” and “putting a retail outlet in the customer’s

hands anywhere.” This can be done with just a mobile

Dept. of CSE 1 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

phone, a PDA connected to a mobile phone or even a

portable PC connected to a mobile phone. M-commerce is

also termed as wireless e-commerce.

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION

Electronic commerce has attracted significant

attention in the last few years. Advances in e-commerce

have resutled in significant progress towards strategies,

requirements and development of e-commerce

applications. Nearly all the applications envisioned and

developed so far assume fixed or stationary users with

wired infrastructure, such as browser on a PC connected to

the Internet using phone lines or a Local Area Network. A

new e-commerce application such as “Wireless e-

commerce” or “Mobile e-commerce” will benefit one to

reach the consumer directly, regardless of where he is.

The emergence of M-commerce, a synonym for

wireless e-commerce allows one to do the same function

that can be done over the internet. This can be done by

Dept. of CSE 2 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

connecting a PDA to a mobile phone, or even a portable PC

connected to a mobile phone. Mobile Commerce is perfect

for the group who always keep a mobile phone by side all

the times. A study from the wireless data and computing

service, a division of strategy analytics, reports that the

mobile commerce market may rise to $200 billion by 2004.

The report predicts that transactions via wireless devices

will generate about $14 billion a year.

We are aware that consensus within business and

industry of future applications is still in its infancy.

However, we are interested in examining those future

applications and technologies that will form the next

frontier of electronic commerce. To help future applications

and to allow designers, developers and researchers to

strategize and create mobile commerce applications, a four

level integrated framework is proposed.

Dept. of CSE 3 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

This framework has four levels: m-commerce

applications, user infrastructure, middleware and network

infrastructure which simplifies the design and development.

By following this framework a single entity is not forced to

do everything to build m-commerce systems, rather they

can build on the functionalities provided by others. The

framework also provides a developer and provider plane to

address the different needs and roles of application

developers, content providers and service providers.

Dept. of CSE 4 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Content provider can build its service using

applications from multiple application developers and also

can aggregate content from other content providers and

can supply the aggregated content to a network operator or

service provider. Service providers can also act as content

aggregators, but are unlikely to act as either an application

or content provider due to their focus on the network and

service aspects of m-commerce. Wireless carriers can play

a very active and important role in the mobile commerce

applications and services due to the fact that mobile user is

going through their network to perform all mobile

Dept. of CSE 5 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

commerce transactions. Mobile user is likely to prefer a

common bill for voice, data and mobile commerce services.

EMERGING MOBILE COMMERCE

APPLICATIONS

There are potentially an unlimited number of mobile

applications, we attempt to identify several important

classes of applications and provide examples within each

class.

Mobile Financial Applications [MFA]

Mobile financial applications are likely to be one of the

most important components of m-commerce. They could

involve a variety of applications such as mobile banking

and brokerage service, mobile money transfer, and mobile

payments as shown in the figure.

Dept. of CSE 6 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

One interesting mobile financial application is micro

payment involving small purchases such as vending and

other items. A mobile device can communicate with a

vending machine using a local wireless network to purchase

desired items. Micro-payments can be implemented in a

variety of ways. One way is that the user could make a call

to a certain number where per minute charges equal the

cost of the vending item. This approach ha been used by

SONERA, a finish wireless provider, in the famous Coke

machine service. In effect it collects money from the users

and credits it to the vending providers.

Dept. of CSE 7 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is also a very important class of

mobile commerce applications. Using demographic

information collected by wireless service providers and

information on the current location of mobile users, much

targeted advertising can be done. The advertising

messages sent to the user can be location-sensitive and

can inform a user about various on-going specials (shops,

malls and restaurants) in surrounding areas as shown in

figure.

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Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

This type of advertising can be performed using Short

Messaging Service (SMS) or by using short paging

messages to mobile users. The messages can be sent to all

users located in a certain area, a user-specific message can

be sent independent of the user’s current location. Since

the services need the current location information of a user,

a third party may be needed to provide location services.

However this may require a sharing of revenues between

the network service provider and location service provider.

Dept. of CSE 9 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

As more wireless bandwidth becomes available,

content rich advertising involve audio, pictures and video

clips can be produced for individual users with specific

needs, interests, and inclinations. It is also possible that

direct advertising to users may be performed without much

control from the wireless service providers.

Mobile Inventory Management (MIM)

This class of application involves location tracking of

goods, services and even people. The tracking of goods

may help service providers in determining the time of

delivery to customer, thus improving customer service and

obtaining a competitive edge over other business. One very

interesting application is “rolling inventory”-which may

involve multiple trucks carrying a large amount of inventory

while on move. Whenever a store needs certain

goods/items, it can locate a truck (preferably in nearby

area) and just-in-time delivery of goods can be performed.

The rolling inventory and delivery application can

Dept. of CSE 10 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

reduce the amount of inventory space and cost for both

vendors and stores and may reduce the time between when

an order is placed and the goods are delivered (shown in

figure).

Location tracking of components can be broken into

two components: indoor and outdoor. Indoor tracking can

be performed by a chipset (TX/RX) And location information

may be transmitted over a satellite or cellular/PCS system

Dept. of CSE 11 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

to the component supplier where such information is

needed.

Product Location and Search (PLS)

This class of application includes locating an item in a

particular area or location. This is concerned with finding an

item with certain specifications and whether it is available

in a specified area or not. Potentially, there could be

multiple places where such an item or items of similar

attributes are located. Currently many people are going to

several stores to find an item (certain brand/size of TV, VCR

or an automobile) and compare prices and features. Using a

mobile device and centralized/distributed database

containing information on products, a user should be able

to find the exact location of the store where a certain item

is located. After that the user can buy online using a

browser on his/her mobile devise. In the case of multiple

stores/vendors carrying an item desired by a user, they

Dept. of CSE 12 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

could compete to get customer by real time manipulation of

prices or by offering instant discounts.

From the technological point of view, a mobile user

can send a query message to a centralized location (shown

in figure), which in turn can interface several different

stores/dealers and decide if the item is available or not.

Proactive Service Management

Dept. of CSE 13 MESCE, Kuttippuram
Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

This class of application is based on collecting

pertinent information about current or near future user

needs and providing services to users proactively. One such

application may involve collecting information about the

aging components of an automobile (shown in figure).

This would help reduce anxiety levels of owners and

improve the general conditions of automobiles on the road

leading to the reduced number of traffic jams, accidents

and even fatalities. From the technological point of view,

automobiles can be equipped with smart sensors that keep

track of how much wear and tear a car component has

Dept. of CSE 14 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

gone through. This information can then be transmitted

using a radio/microwave/satellite system to a specified

service center or other location. Some implications of such

applications are privacy, security, reliability and cost of

deployment.

Wireless Business Re-engineering

Many insurance business situations involve going to

customer’s premises, taking notes of a particular situation,

going back to the office and then taking suitable actions.

This process takes a long time and is not very efficient. To

improve this business practice, a wireless re-engineering

application can be used which allows on-the-spot claim

adjustment. In such a scenario, a claim adjuster goes to the

customers place, takes picture and stores them in his/her

mobile device for uploading to the companies database.

Using a small printer attached to the mobile device, he/she

prints a claim check. This entire process is performed in

minutes as opposed to days.

Dept. of CSE 15 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

WIRELESS USER INTERFACE AND

MIDDLEWARE ISSUES

To make the application described previously a reality,

several functional components are necessary as highlighted

in the first figure.

Although it is able to do some simple mobile commerce

transactions using a simple hand-held device, many

sophisticated mobile commerce applications require other

capabilities. For example,

• Dynamic, adaptable and smart user interface that

learns from and with user,

• Ability to accept user input in many forms including

voice,

• Ability to display rich and usable contents,

Dept. of CSE 16 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

• Location awareness and ability to track users, products

and devices,

• Multi network interfaces for increased and reliable

wireless access,

• Basic security features to handle malicious code,

support for authenticating user, services and

applications,

• Ability to work with and adapt to mobile commerce

applications with diverse requirements,

• Possible support for context awareness,

• ability to discover and download upgraded applications

and software proactively,

• An operating system that can manage resources to

support many of the functions.

Some of these features are already available in hand-

held devices. Many of these capabilities will increase the

size and weight significantly, and thus, potentially affect the

usability and portability of these devices.

Dept. of CSE 17 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Wireless and mobile middleware for mobile

commerce

Traditionally, middleware unites different applications,

tools, networks and technologies; allowing user access via a

common interface. Mobile middleware can be defined as an

enabling layer of software that is used by the applications

development to connect the m-commerce applications with

different networks and operating systems without

introducing mobility awareness in the applications.

To allow for web content to be accessible from

everywhere, from PCs to TVs to palm devices to cellular

phones, the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) had

developed several recommendations. These

Dept. of CSE 18 MESCE, Kuttippuram
Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

recommendations include the Extensible Makeup Language

(XML) for richer semantic information, improved Cascading

Style Sheets (CSS) and Extensible Style Sheet Language

(XSL) to further separate content from presentation, and a

Document Object Model (DOM) which defines a language

independent application programming interface that

applications can use to access and modify the structure,

content and style of HTML and XML documents.

WIRELESS NETWORKING

INFRASTRUCTURE

In this section the wireless networking requirements

for various mobile commerce applications are being

discussed. Mobile commerce applications would present

five general networking requirements: location

management, multicast support, network dependability,

and support for Quality-Of-Service, and the ability to roam

across multiple wireless networks. To help network

designers and developers, we translate these five

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Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

networking requirements into more specific attributes as

shown in the table.

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Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Wireless infrastructure requirements for mobile

commerce
Networking
Specific attributes
requirements
Multicast support 1. support for multicast in

infrastructure wireless networks

2. support for multicast in ad hoc

wireless networks(much more

difficult due to dynamic topology and

other factors)

3. group connectivity under

mobility/failure

4. synchronization/ atomicity of

transactions from multiple users

Network 1. impact and frequency of

dependability component failure

2. fault-tolerant design

3. user access to multiple networks

4. levels of network availability

Quality -of –service 1. bandwidth requirements

2. delay and delay variation

3. tolerable loss characteristics

Roaming across 1. handoff among multiple wireless

multiple networks networks

Dept. of CSE 21 MESCE, Kuttippuram
2. keeping track of users across

networks
Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

After identifying the various networking

requirements and specific attributes, a global and

comprehensive wireless infrastructure for mobile commerce

applications is presented as shown in the figure.

This infrastructure also supports efficient location

management, multicast and fault tolerance to increase

levels dependability.

Dept. of CSE 22 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Dept. of CSE 23 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

M-COMMERCE ISSUES FOR CARRIERS

AND DEVELOPERS

Wireless carriers can play a very active and important

role in the mobile commerce applications and services due

to the fact that a mobile user is going through their network

to perform all mobile transactions. Service providers can

Dept. of CSE 24 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

also act as content aggregators but are likely to act as a

clearing house for content and application providers in

advertising and distributing their products to its customers.

Wireless carriers are also to face challenges involving

how to price mobile commerce services, and because

several carriers are likely to be involved in completing a

mobile commerce transaction, another issue is hoe to

divide revenues among multiple carriers.

There are many important issues that need to be

addressed before mobile commerce applications can be

widely deployed. These include the development of new

business models for charging wireless customers and for

revenue division among providers, maturity of application

software, middleware support, vendor support and user

trust necessary for conducting mobile transactions.

There are some important issues for developers of m-

commerce applications. These issues are presented in the

table below.

Dept. of CSE 25 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Due to the potential values of many mobile commerce

applications, atomic transactions may be necessary. It is

possible that the mobile middleware may provide most of

such functions and thus reducing the amount of work

needed to support atomic transactions.

Some important issues for applications developers

Issues Comments
Network Band width and delay requirements (real-

processing time vs. non-real time applications)

and storage Mobile device capabilities

requirements Disconnected operation

Multicasting for group communications

Symmetric vs. asymmetric processing and

storage
Application Use of any existing Software

Development Development Kit (SDK)

Simulation of environment where

application will be used

Maximum number of simultaneous users

The size of application code

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Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Support for secure transactions

Support for fixed users

Compatibility Independence from the underlying

and wireless access technologies

interoperabilit Independence from the device

y functionalities

Interoperability with IP

Compatibility with Wireless Application

Protocol (WAP)
Desirable Support for intermittent connectivity

features Adaptive to the user and network

environment

Support for “atomic” transactions

Easy upgradability

User specified features invocation

INTERESTING RESEARCH ISSUES IN

MOBILE COMMERCE

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 Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

There are many interesting research problems in

mobile commerce. Some of these are unique due to the

limitations of mobile devices and wireless networks and

some are similar to research problems that are currently

being addressed by e-commerce research developers. The

problems that are unique to m-commerce are:

• Novel applications and services made possible due to

the wireless networks and mobile devices.

• Security and privacy problems that are unique to

wireless networks and mobile devices.

• Middleware issues that are unique due to device,

network and protocol limitations

• Role of different wireless networking standards

• Adoption factors of mobile devices that are

significantly different in different parts of the world

Dept. of CSE 28 MESCE, Kuttippuram

 Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

• Context and location awareness in unique to mobile

commerce as many of the applications are sensitive to the

context and the location of a user.

The research problems that can be addressed by the

existing e-commerce research with some modifications and

extensions are:

• Strategy of new service offering

• Role of m-commerce providers

• Trust building

• Adoption of new services

• Pricing models and sensitivity analysis.

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

Dept. of CSE 29 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

Mobile commerce is an interesting and challenging

area of research and development. It presents many issues

that cover many disciplines and may best be addressed by

an active participation of computer and

telecommunications experts, social scientists, economists

and business strategists.

It introduced several new classes of applications,

reviewed networking requirements, and discussed

application development support. Since the area of mobile

commerce is very new and still emerging, several

interesting research problems that are currently being

addressed or should be addressed by the research and

development community. It is believed that user trust will

play a crucial role in acceptance and widespread

deployment of mobile commerce applications.

Dept. of CSE 30 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

REFERENCES

• G. Djuknie and R. Richton. Geolocation and assisted

GPS, IEEE Computer (February 2001).

• M. Oliphant. The mobile phone meets the Internet,

IEEE spectrum (August 1999)

• FCC e911. http: //www.fcc.gov/e911

• IMT-2000.http: // www.itu.org/imt

• www.google.com

• www.ask.com

Dept. of CSE 31 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

ABSTRACT

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant

progress towards strategies, requirements and

developments of e-commerce applications. However, nearly

all e-commerce applications envisioned and developed so

far assume fixed are stationary users with wired

infrastructure. A new e-commerce applications that will be

possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless

and mobile networks is envisioned. To allow designers,

developers and researchers to strategize and create mobile

commerce applications, a four level integrated framework

for mobile commerce is proposed. Since there are

potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce

applications, several important classes of applications such

as mobile financial applications, mobile inventory

management, proactive service management, product

location and search and wireless re-engineering are

attempted to be identified. It is discussed 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, networking requirements is addressed, support from

Dept. of CSE 32 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

wireless carriers is discussed, and some open research

problems is presented.

Dept. of CSE 33 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION

3. EMERGING MOBILE COMMERCE APPLICATIONS

4. WIRELESS USER INFRASTRUCTURE AND MIDDLEWARE

ISSUES

5. WIRELESS NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE

6. M-COMMERCE ISSUES FOR CARRIERS AND

DEVELOPERS

7. INTERESTING RESEARCH IN M-COMMERCE

8. CONCLUSION

9. REFERENCES

Dept. of CSE 34 MESCE, Kuttippuram

Seminar Report ’03 M-Commerce

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I express my sincere thanks to Prof. M.N

Agnisarman Namboothiri (Head of the Department,

Computer Science and Engineering, MESCE), Mr. Sminesh

(Staff incharge) for their kind co-operation for presenting

the seminar.

I also extend my sincere thanks to all other members

of the faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

Department and my friends for their co-operation and

encouragement.

HINAYA ABDUL

RAHIM

Dept. of CSE 35 MESCE, Kuttippuram