What is LBMS

Location-based mobile services (LBMS) are at present an ever growing trend, as found in the latest and most popular mobile applications launched. They are, indeed, supported by the hasty evolution of mobile devices capabilities, namely smart phones, which are becoming truer mobile pocket-computers; by users demand, always searching for new ways to benefit from technology, besides getting more contextualized and user-centred services; and, lastly, by market drive, which sees mobile devices as a dedicated way to reach customers, providing profile-based publicity, products, discounts and events. With e-commerce, products and services started arriving to potential customers through desktop computers, where they can be bought and fast delivered to a given address. However, expressions such as “being mobile”, “always connected”, “anytime anywhere” that already characterize life in the present will certainly continue to do so in the near future. Meanwhile, mobile devices centred commerce services seem to be the next step. Therefore, this paper presents a system architecture designed for location-based e-commerce systems. These systems, where location plays the most important role, enable a remote products/services search, based in user parameters: after a product search, shops with that products are returned in the search results and are displayed in a map, around the user present location; and services like obtaining more information, reserving and purchasing are made available as well. This concept represents a mix between traditional client-oriented commerce and faceless mass-oriented e-commerce, enabling a proximity-based user-contextualized system, being well capable of conveying significant advantages and facilities to both service-providers/retailers and users.