Abstract
Mobile commerce (or in short, m-commerce) is currently at the stage where e-commerce was a decade ago. Many of the concerns consumers had regarding e-commerce (such as security, confidentiality, and reliability) are now directed towards m-commerce. To complicate the matter further, the lack of a standardized technology has made m-commerce grow in multiple directions in different parts of the world. Thus, the popularity of m-commerce-based services varies by country, by culture, and by individual user. For example, in Europe the most popular application is SMS (short message service) or text messaging, in Japan interactive games and picture exchange via NTT DoCoMo i-mode, and in North America e-mail via interactive pagers (such as RIM BlackBerry) and wireless application protocol-based (WAP-based) wireless data portals providing news, stock quotes, and weather information. It is safe to predict that these applications will take on different forms as the technologies mature, devices become more capable in form and functionality, and service providers become more innovative in their business models. It is true that m-commerce has witnessed spectacular growth across the globe. It is also encouraging that several factors are expected to accelerate the pace of adoption of m-commerce. Notable among these drivers is convergence in the voice/data industry, leaping improvements in related technology and standards, adoptive technology culture in many parts of the world, and governmental and regulatory initiatives. Despite the undisputed promise of m-commerce, there are several barriers that are slowing the pace of adoption of m-commerce. The major barriers include: (a) lack of good business models to generate revenues, (b) perception of lack of security, (c) short product lifecycle due to rapidly changing technology, (d) non-convergence of standards, (e) usability of devices, (f) limitation of bandwidth, and (g) cost. Many of the aforesaid were common to e-commerce also at its introduction and growth stage. We strongly believe it is worthwhile to investigate how e-commerce has been able to overcome these barriers so that we can incorporate some of the successful strategies to m-commerce. In our study, we will first compare and contrast e-commerce and m-commerce with respect to a set of common criteria such as: (1) hardware requirement, (2) software requirement, (3) connection or access, and (4) content. In the process, we will identify the principal barriers to the development of m-commerce as outlined in the above list.