M-commerce (mobile commerce) is the buying and selling
of goods and services through wireless handheld devices
such as cellular telephone and personal digital assistants.
M-commerce is currently mainly
used for the sale of mobile phone ring-tones and games,
although as 3G/UMTS services roll out it is increasingly
used to enable payment for location based services such
as maps, as well as video and audio content, including
full length music tracks. Other services include the
sending of information such as football scores via SMS.
Currently the main payment methods
used to enable m-commerce are:
premium-rate calling numbers, charging
to the mobile telephone user's bill or deducting from
their calling credit, either directly or via reverse-charged
SMS.
'M-commerce' was coined in the
late 1990s during the dot-com boom. The idea that highly
profitable M-commerce applications would be possible
though the broadband mobile telephony provided by 2.5G
and 3G cell phone services was one of the main reasons
for hundreds of billions of dollars in licensing fees
paid by European telecommunications companies for UMTS
and other 3G licenses in 2000 and 2001.
Other examples of M-commerce applications
are information-on-demand systems like news services
or stock tickers, banking and stock brokerage applications
by SMS, WAP or iMode.
