Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce (M -commerce, MC ) is a special form of electronic commerce (English electronic commerce ) using wireless communication and mobile devices.

Mobile commerce refers to any form of business transaction in which the transaction partners in the context of power initiation, service level agreement or performance mobile electronic communication technologies (such as mobile communications, wireless LAN or Bluetooth) used in conjunction with mobile devices. For mobile commerce are available in the literature, no uniform concept of scaffolding, so that often the term mobile business is on this definition analogous to electronic commerce applications and mobile commerce is only in the narrow sense, ie for goods, used. ( In this narrower sense, you could then translate the concept of MC with " Mobile Trading ", which would be misleading for the full term content. )

In addition to technical and economic aspects are considered, such as the possibilities and specific design rules for the realization of MC applications, safety aspects, the very special value chain in mobile commerce, business and revenue models, pricing models, and the various uses of the Mobile Commerce.

In particular, mediated on the basis of value-added SMS services have been repeatedly discussed in public in recent years.

Implementing applications MC

At the beginning of the considerations for MC applications, the belief it is not sufficient to make an existing offer on a mobile device available, such as an existing web page outweighed mobile accessible. For one thing, have the use of mobile communication devices and techniques has specific advantages and disadvantages, on the other hand, the user needs differed significantly from those typically in applications outside of MC.

This realization had a series managerial implications and drew on the technical side also for the application design is an important principle is: "Design to Mobile ". By this was meant that a Mobile Application, for example, a shopping app should be specifically tailored to the potentials and problems of mobility. Problems referred in this respect primarily to the MC- relevant interfaces, the presentation and the input options available at that time ( in the mass market) target devices and the nature and range of the data available transmission (GPRS, HSCSD).

With the advancement of mobile Internet, especially the introduction of UMTS and HSDPA and new billing models on the one hand ( one country to another ), and more powerful devices ( smartphone) with more mature, operating systems took the restrictions on mobile applications significantly. It was found that mobile characteristics such as location-based services at this time more in special applications ( eg digital fleet management ) as mass market played a role.

The Apple iPhone and later devices with similar capabilities reduced the gap between what is reasonably usable with mobile devices, and what is available with stationary terminals.

Depending on the category and severity, an interaction with the user is realized through various MC- relevant interfaces come of it interactive voice response into consideration, send / receive SMS or MMS, Internet-based simple interaction (eg via WAP or xHTML pages ), simple applications (using simple scripting languages ​​) and complex applications ( using regular high level languages ​​, such as those based on J2ME, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile or BREW ). In addition, you pull services, where the user initiates the data transfer, and push services, where the user is actively addressed different. The general user preferences in MC require fast applications that require little memory and can be operated intuitively with a few keystrokes.

Safety aspects

From the perspective of the provider, the level of information security of the applications used by him may affect the business primarily in two ways: It provides a damage from attacks by third parties or the customer fraud, or customers take due to security concerns are not you a quote.

This was especially at the beginning an essential theme: The security objectives authorization, confidentiality, integrity, authentication, non-repudiation and are usually caused by technical protection measures, in particular to achieve the use of cryptography. This in turn requires a certain amount of computing power on mobile devices, so that the issues of CPU power consumption and the amount of charge of the batteries used marched into view.

Due to significant advances in both areas, it is now possible also for the protection of specific targets in the MC to use standard techniques for the protection of the mobile device and the air interface. For protection against the installation of potentially harmful applications on mobile devices, digital certificates are used (eg safety in Symbian OS). Further support popular mobile devices thanks to significantly increased computing power today Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure to encrypt the communication.

Is to consider how fundamental in the field of information security, a difference between the actual, objective safety and those perceived by the user, the subjective security. This is often the cause, if not use due to safety concerns end users an offer, or the management of a company opts against the use of mobile technologies.

Value chain

Within and around the MC a variety of value-added activities will take place. This is not only a strong interdependence between the different kinds of activities, but often also by actors in several different areas of work. In the simple case, it involves disintermediation, ie expansion to neighboring value chain. This could act as a content provider, which prepares its own content and even provides a portal. In other cases, technological, historical or reasons of market power have led to the diversification of companies. Typical examples are companies that have the end customer through high profile as a terminal supplier, but operate their actual core business infrastructure suppliers. This network of relationships influences many processes and can only be recognized when the consideration of value activities is applied significantly wider in the MC as for example in e-commerce. This means that not only the primary activities - contribute directly to products or services according to the above definition of the MC - taken into account, but also secondary activities. Overall, three major areas of value creation can be identified: the provision of equipment and applications, the provision of networks for wireless communication and the provision of services and content for end users. For a detailed value chain cf.

Business, revenue and billing models

Business models in the MC can be good in the basic building blocks (classic ), disassemble (classical ) service, service, procurement, integration, content and context. One possibility for the evaluation of business models provides the application of the theory > Informational added value and its extension through the concept of mobile added values ​​. Proceeds can be while achieving three sources of revenue: direct indirect obtained from users of a MC- tender to the user of the MC- tender ( ie revenues from third parties) and indirectly related to the MC offer ( ie in the context of a non -MC- bid ). Moreover, revenues can be categorized according to the type of revenue. A distinction is made between transaction-based and transaction based revenues. To generate direct transaction-driven revenue a functioning mobile payment is required, in the simplest case by settlement on the mobile phone bill. Often a MC offering is acquired by mobile service provider and offered to the customer for their own account. In the age of 2.5 and 3G networks, however, also relies on the German market increasingly offering directly by the service provider through. Here occurs the provider in a direct customer relationship and provide by the content and quality of the service added value provided by the customer paid in addition to the transport of data. Between providers and network operators is carried out in some form of equalization of surplus value and deployment effort. If the data volume and the added value of the service priced separately, this is referred to as the settlement by premium rate; the customer pays for use of the service a fixed sum, which includes transportation and value added, we speak of billing by fixed price. The need of splitting the fee between the mobile and the service provider known as revenue sharing.

Applications

Important application areas are

• MC applications and services that are offered by mobile phone, portal and specialized service providers to end-users or for business customers, especially mobile commerce, search and information services and portals and entertainment. There are, for example, mobile banking, mobile entertainment and mobile information services (also known as mobile content ), mobile marketing and mobile ticketing.

• The use of mobile technologies for the integration of mobile workplaces in the electronic chain operational performance, in particular in connection with the improvement of business processes ( mobile business processes ).