M-Business - The Race to Mobility

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However, few companies made an initiative to develop a business model or venture into a business area based on mobile applications. Following are the business areas opened up by m-business: Network Infrastructure: In this sector, companies will be responsible for providing the essential network infrastructure for mobile business. This includes hardware fiber networks, wireless communication towers and satellite networks. The revenue model of the companies in this sector will be based on hardware sales or leasing the developed mobile infrastructure to telecom companies. Access: This sector will be responsible for providing Internet access to wireless devices. The revenues of these companies are based on the fees they charge for providing Internet access to wireless devices. Content: This sector will be responsible for developing and providing content for the wireless devices. The revenues under this segment will come from advertising and subscription fee. Some examples of companies under this category are Yahoo, Infospace and 13Mobile.

Commerce: In this sector, companies will be conducting their business over mobile devices. The business model can be business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) category. Examples of companies under this category are Amazon and eBay.
Software: In this sector, companies will be providing essential software to run entire applications on a mobile platform. Software include operating software, application software and various others software. Companies that are providing software are Microsoft, Qualcomm and Tibco.
Hardware: This segment will be providing the essential hardware to all parties dealing with mobile applications. The hardware can be handheld devices, PCs, servers and others. Companies that are providing hardware are Handspring, Compaq, HP and Sun Microsystems.
Application: In this sector, companies will be providing different types of services to the mobile end-users. Services can be related to transaction processing, consulting, information services and others. Aether, Air2Web are the companies that are providing various mobile applications to end-users.

All the above sectors have to work together collaboratively in order to create value for mobile consumers. Let us go understand the five phases of mobile business. We can infer that for mobile applications to become popular require continuous improvements in the mobile technology and increased demand from the consumers. The transformation from e-business to m-business is in its early stage. However, soon mobile business will be in its fifth phase where mobile technology will become a major technology required for running the business.

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