A Framework for the Emerging Mobile Commerce Applications

We envision many new e-commerce applications will be possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless and mobile networks. These applications can collectively be termed "wireless e-commerce" or "mobile commerce". To allow designers, developers, and researchers to strategize and effectively implement mobile commerce applications, we propose a 4-level integrated framework for mobile commerce. Since there are potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce applications, we only identify a few important classes of applications such as Mobile Financial Applications, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Inventory Management, Proactive Service Management, Product Location and Search, and Wireless Re-engineering. We also address the networking requirements of these applications and discuss how these requirements can be supported by existing and emerging wireless networks. It is our hope that this work will become the framework for further research in mobile