Mobile E-Commerce and Location-Based Services: Technology and Requirements

Advances in Internet and network technology and the rapidly growing number of mobile personal devices result in the fast growth of Mobile E-Commerce, M-Commerce. In this paper we view M-Commerce as activity of conducting E-commerce transactions using mobile terminals over a wireless network. A special case of M-commerce are Location Based Services (LBS) where often the actual position of the terminal is used in the service provision. In this paper we concentrate on the requirements for the LBS. Because technology is an important facilitator and at the same time a limiting factor, we review shortly the technology aspects relevant for LBS. We then present the most important user, system and infrastructure requirements. Finally we present a design and implementation of an LBS application running on Java handsets and evaluate its properties and review lessons learned with respect to the requirements.