Mobile E-commerce and Location-Based Services - Technology and Requirements - Assignment Example

?Summary of ‘Mobile E-Commerce and Location-Based Services: Technology and Requirements’ At the present time, the advancement and acceptance of mobile technologies have brought in new services which are related to commerce. A big part has been taken by internet innovation for the development of mobile technologies. In between the time of 2002, there were about 454 GSM operators all over the world, who were providing service to about more than 730 million users in 182 countries. Many of the new mobile user started GSM in the middle of 2002, and till now the number of mobile users are on the mount. The new smart phones are in approach of anyone these days. There are many other forms of applications like multimedia, games applications through which a person can pass his/her time. Therefore, in real they can keep information of their credit cards, tickets and can have storage of electronic cash and much more than this. In simple it also plays a role of electronic wallet. The article highlights and discusses about the technologies which are now leading to the highest peak of growth in the 3rd generation of mobile networking. Some of the new mobile and terminals technologies discussed by the authors in the article are discussed below: Mobile networks and their development: Most of the mobile services are based on the second generation (2G) and these services made possible to transfer the data and services through wireless telecom network e.g. (GSM) as “Global System for Mobile communications”, (GPRS) as “Global Packet Radio Service”, (HSCSD) as “High Speed Circuit Switched Data”, (SMS) as “Short Message Service” and many other. The International Telecommunication Union system changed the standard in 2000, called International Mobile Telecommunications. The main idea of this change was to make enable the services such as, (video streams, animations, pictures, etc.). According to the authors, as the advancement is continuously being made in the ground of mobile networking, the plans have started on the development of 4G which will be completed by 2012. One of the main reasons for the differences in networks generation is of the capacity available to the customers. The current 2G is providing the capacity of min of 14.4 kbps and max to 57.6 kbps and then 3G network will be having the capacity of more than 2Mbps. 2G has a big hand in supporting the E-Commerce through WAP technology which brought in Internet to the handsets. Another rising technology is Bluetooth. It can be used for small transmission of information on ad hoc basis form point to point (Tsalgatidou, Veijalaninen, Markkula, Katasonov, and Hadjiefthymiades, 2003). Mobile Terminals: Smart-phones are the name given to the new introduction of mobiles. And this is because their features can be added or deleted or can even be modified. In most of the new smart-phones, GPRS, Bluetooth and MMS services are available and also the availability of inbuilt or attachable camera with the high color display resolution is there. Internal memory of megabytes is another added innovation in these mobiles for high storage which also is supported by external memory chip normally known as memory card. The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) has played an important role in putting a standard in mobiles, its services and applications. Java, MMS and XHTML are the most important technologies of OMA. In order to provide extra securities to mobile services, MeT was established to provide high security and more innovations to mobile transaction (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). Positioning systems of LBS: LBS, “Location Based Services”, require a specific positioning for mobile terminals. Geocoding is a system which offers positions for mobile terminal and is divided into three main classes: satellite positioning, network-based positioning and, local positioning. All these different positioning systems differ in their techniques, features and reliability. Satellite Positioning: Satellite positioning system is a system which uses satellites revolving around the earth and receives signal from different terminals. It allows the user to access any mobile networking site anywhere. GPS is considered to be the most common and widely used satellite positioning system. GPS is operated by Ministry of Defense. A Russian satellite system, GLONASS, is also very common (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). Network-based positioning: The network-based positioning systems can be defined as a system which is used to position mobile terminals with the usage of mobile telecommunication networks. There are many different methods like; Angle of Arrival (AOA), Time of Arrival (TOA), Enhanced Observed Time Difference (E-OTD) (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). Local positioning: Local positioning is the third and the last class of positioning systems. It only operates in the restricted areas and usually works on short distance signal transmission. It covers in door areas like, huge buildings, shopping centers etc (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). Location-Based Service Requirements: Except to those sets of requirements M-Commerce, there are some other requirements for LBS. And the requirements are: user (functional), usability, reliability, privacy, location infrastructure and, interoperability. These are the requirement which cover some issues in Location Based Service, LBS (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). User Requirements: It should be according to the customer’s requirements as to browse all information; the user can access any site and can do it fast. It should get easy for the user to access many queries at a time. It is obvious that all the information or the result cannot be shown in one view, so for this, LBS must provide with the sets of views one by one. Usability requirements: Often, mobile users are in a condition of busy schedule and in an environment where they work on other tasks as well. Sometimes, they get dead busy in other works. For the easiness of the usage it must be user interface and must be very simple in the information and the information it presents should be limited to the point and must not be exceeded. Reliability requirements: LBS service is mainly for those people who travel a lot. It is specially a tool for them to make decision where to go. Wrong information to the one at the time of need can result in anger of the user. The most important point since the LBS have launched is to put all the correct information with all the correct data. Wrong data or information can easily lead to a problem. Privacy Requirement: It is another significant factor to be considered in the usage of LBS. Issues like; wrong usage of information, disclosure of information and etc were common. OMA has given priority to the system to keep the master control on privacy. The usage or the disclosure of the information must be with the reason as: registration information and regulatory frameworks. Location infrastructure requirements: It is based on two main points, one is o determine the position of the customer and the second is to provide the services which are determined by the customer. It is important to provide the customer with the good accuracy and speed of information especially when the demand of the customer is high like; car navigation system is at the higher demand than to find a restaurant. There should not be a lot of load on the networking that it becomes difficult to for the user to use it. Possibility to locate in all different models of mobiles and importantly consumer privacy should be secure (Tsalgatidou et al., 2003). Service interoperability requirements: It is important to assure interoperability on all levels. LBS should be able to exchange information with several other types of terminals as, GSM terminals and positioning infrastructures. Conclusion In the article, the authors have discussed many of the important factors like new technologies for E-Commerce and usage of LBS. The authors also talked about the positioning of the systems and the issues which are related to the system. The issues and the deployments methods which cover a very wide range, including capabilities of operating system, user interface design, techniques for positioning, terminal technologies, capabilities of network, etc were discussed in this paper. For sure, LBS is important and playing a big role in the growth of modern mobile services. References Tsalgatidou, A., Veijalaninen, J., Markkula, J., Katasonov, A., and Hadjiefthymiades, S. (2003). Mobile e-commerce and location based services: technology and requirements. Retrieved May 14, 2013, from http://www.scangis.org/scangis2003/papers/27.pdf Read More