With the vision of mobile convergence supporting communication and computing on a single set of hardware components, mobile wireless network operators, cell phone manufactures, and independent software vendors are working together to create new applications and services with the hope of taking a lead position in the next wave of mobile computing. These services and applications essentially leverage the increasingly high computing capability supplied by the cell phone and the flexible, high-speed wireless connectivity to offer an efficient, reliable, and rich experience to the end user. This section summarizes the potential services and applications in this domain.
Mobile Commerce
This category includes mobile banking, location-based business information service and shopping assistance, mobile advertising, and mobile payment, among other services. Japan and Korea already offer widespread mobile payment applications that enable consumers to make purchases at a convenience store by waving the cell phone past a reading device. Numerous startup companies in the United States are developing applications that enable credit card payments to be verified, parking fees to be paid at the meter, and social networking. Industries involved in this category include banks, credit card companies, retail stores, stock trading agencies, and online businesses.
Mobile Enterprise
Services and applications in this category are concerned with mobile worker assistance such as real-time job scheduling, route planning, package delivery updates, mobile collaboration and communication, and mobile business transaction. Moreover, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and supply chain management (SCM) systems can be extended to support mobile access and onsite processing. In addition to mobile enterprise, law enforcement, educational, and healthcare organizations may also utilize these services and solutions to improve productivity and reduce costs.
This category includes real-time, location-based navigation assistance coupled with traffic data access, mobile gaming, rich media services, and so on. Mapping and GPS-based navigation services are increasingly being integrated into general-purpose smartphone platforms. Mobile television services have been available in the United States and some Asian countries; online music download services (such as Apple's iTunes service) are available on some high-end smartphones; mass media companies, music and movie companies, online gaming service providers, and of course the consumer, will be involved in this category of services and applications.
Needless to say, the aforementioned summary is by no means exhaustive; however, it is indicative of the broad range of new services and applications with tremendous potential for businesses. Indeed, the enormous opportunity of next-generation mobile computing has created myriad services and applications that will likely continue to mature and succeed in the foreseeable future. What all these services and applications share is a reliance on software running on smartphones to reach the end user. To this end, software designers and developers have to be aware of the challenges and obstacles involved in smartphone-based application development.
Mobile Commerce
This category includes mobile banking, location-based business information service and shopping assistance, mobile advertising, and mobile payment, among other services. Japan and Korea already offer widespread mobile payment applications that enable consumers to make purchases at a convenience store by waving the cell phone past a reading device. Numerous startup companies in the United States are developing applications that enable credit card payments to be verified, parking fees to be paid at the meter, and social networking. Industries involved in this category include banks, credit card companies, retail stores, stock trading agencies, and online businesses.
Mobile Enterprise
Services and applications in this category are concerned with mobile worker assistance such as real-time job scheduling, route planning, package delivery updates, mobile collaboration and communication, and mobile business transaction. Moreover, enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and supply chain management (SCM) systems can be extended to support mobile access and onsite processing. In addition to mobile enterprise, law enforcement, educational, and healthcare organizations may also utilize these services and solutions to improve productivity and reduce costs.
Other Mobile Software PlatformsMobile Data Service and Entertainment
Symbian OS is developed by Symbian, a company supported by several cell phone manufacturers, including Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung. Originally based on the EPOC operating system, Symbian OS defines several UI reference models for different types of devices. Symbian OS uses EPOC C++, a pure object-oriented language, as the supporting programming language for both system services implementations and APIs. It also allows Java applications for mobile devices (Java 2 Micro Edition, J2ME, applications) to run on top of a small Java runtime environment. The Symbian Developer website (www.symbian.com/developer) provides numerous technical documents for Symbian OS, SDKs, and sample code, as well as information on Symbian OS development and the Symbian developer community.
Palm OS, developed by Palm Inc., is a preemptive, multitasking operating system for Palm PDAs and cell phones. Palm OS supports both the ARM and Motorola 68000 architectures. Developers can choose a programming language from C, C++, Visual Basic, or Java, although C is most widely used for Palm OS software development. Interested readers can visit the Palm OS developer site (www.palmsource.com/developers) for more technical details. Palm OS application development is facilitated by the Palm OS 68K and Protein SDKs and some commercial developer suites. A developer suite is an integrated software tool that enables developers to create both ARM-native and Palm OS Protein-powered applications for Palm OS Cobalt and 68K applications.
This category includes real-time, location-based navigation assistance coupled with traffic data access, mobile gaming, rich media services, and so on. Mapping and GPS-based navigation services are increasingly being integrated into general-purpose smartphone platforms. Mobile television services have been available in the United States and some Asian countries; online music download services (such as Apple's iTunes service) are available on some high-end smartphones; mass media companies, music and movie companies, online gaming service providers, and of course the consumer, will be involved in this category of services and applications.
Needless to say, the aforementioned summary is by no means exhaustive; however, it is indicative of the broad range of new services and applications with tremendous potential for businesses. Indeed, the enormous opportunity of next-generation mobile computing has created myriad services and applications that will likely continue to mature and succeed in the foreseeable future. What all these services and applications share is a reliance on software running on smartphones to reach the end user. To this end, software designers and developers have to be aware of the challenges and obstacles involved in smartphone-based application development.
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