Ubiquitous Commerce: The New World of Technologies

Developments in mobile communications and ubiquitous computing have heralded an era of ubiquitous commerce (ucommerce).This paper studies the concept of ubiquitous computing and its adaption to commerce with new issues associated. With the rapid advancement in field of networking and communications, no aspect of human life is untouched. Commercial activities are also affected by the new advancements. Any time/ always/ anywhere service providing is the key to this ultimate or ubiquitous commerce. Commerce that offers unique and personalized service to every customer individually using ubiquitous networks is called u-commerce. U-commerce is abbreviation that stands for ubiquitous commerce, also called ubicomp or ultimate commerce. U-commerce represents the next phase of commence, which is initiated by electronic commerce (e-commerce) and propagated by mobile commerce (m-commerce).In this paper, we look into the basic construct or building blocks of U-commerce and what are the obstacles faced in its implementations. U-commerce is combination of ecommerce, m-commerce, television, voice and silent commerce. It can be seen as extension of current types of commerce, but not as their replacement. Main u-commerce characteristics are described using the four u-constructs: ubiquity, universality, uniqueness, and unison. Although U-commerce brings many benefits the principal obstacle to u-commerce development and adoption are customer concerns for their privacy protection.