Mobile business research: recent advances and future prospects

Citation

Giaglis, G.M. (2006), "Mobile business research: recent advances and future prospects", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 12 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bpmj.2006.15712caa.001

Mobile business research: recent advances and future prospects

Introduction

The term “mobile era” as a characterization of the twenty-first century can hardly be considered as an exaggeration. In times where mobile phone penetration is well above the 70 per cent mark in some countries, and has even surpassed fixed line penetration in a few cases, it is not surprising that wireless applications are claiming much of the industrial, academic, and even popular media attention.

Mobile business (mBusiness) is a term that has been coined to denote the ways in which mobile communication technologies can be applied to address the requirements of mobile users that need to access a varied range of applications and services through wireless access devices. mBusiness applications include, amongst others, information and communication services (e.g. assisted navigation, mobile yellow pages, and mobile advertising), mobile transactions (such as mobile shopping and mobile payments), entertainment applications (for example, mobile games and mobile audio/video), as well as business-to-business applications (such as mobile supply chain management, mobile customer relationship management, and mobile workforce applications).

Despite the immense business potential of such applications, mBusiness is also characterized by a number of uncertainties and challenges, which have served to create a high-risk environment for entrepreneurial investment and strategy formulation. The uncertainties surrounding the future of mBusiness are not dissimilar to the ones of any new technology-driven and fast-growing application area. The absence of past data and the numerous possible future directions serve to create a complex landscape that is difficult to resolve even for the world’s most highly acclaimed experts. Whilst technological developments and standardization efforts proceed at a rapid pace, many business challenges pertaining the deployment and management of value-added services remain unresolved. There is considerable uncertainty as demand, competition, target markets, business models, and value-added services still lack precise definition.

The special issue

This special issue aims at contributing to the debate surrounding the present and future of mBusiness by publishing high quality original work identifying and studying mBusiness research challenges. In line with the journal’s scope, the emphasis of the papers published in this issue is on process management and business-related issues, rather than on technical ones.

The response to the original call for papers has been overwhelming, exemplifying the wide attention being paid to mBusiness by researchers worldwide. After consultation with many prospective authors that expressed interest in the special issue, 16 papers were officially received by the special issue’s deadline (30 June 2003). There has been a considerable geographical spread in the papers, which came from ten different countries. Germany and the UK topped the list with three submissions each, while Finland and Greece followed with two. There were also papers from Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, New Zealand, and the United Arab Emirates.

The papers also presented a good spread intopics covered, including:

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  mobile marketing (two papers);

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  mobile applications for tourism (two papers), healthcare (one paper), collaboration work (one paper), and investment decision support (one paper);

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  research into mobile partnerships and mBusiness models (two papers);

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  international analyses of the mobile internet industry (two papers);

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  research into the legal implications of mobile service provision (one paper);

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  exploration of trends in communication technologies enabling mBusiness (one paper); and

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  technical works on software agent-based mobile applications (one paper) and mobile-augmented business process support (two papers).

All papers were subjected to a double-blind review process, with three independent reviewers assigned to each paper. Based on the reviews received, five papers have been accepted for publication in the special issue (31.25 per cent acceptance rate). These papers were revised by the authors to address the comments and criticism of the reviewers, while the final editorial decisions have been the responsibility of the special issue’s guest editor.

The papers

The issue begins with a paper by Damian Woolfall of Henley Management College, UK, titled “A game and network perspective on m-business partnerships”. In this conceptual work, the author addresses the important research domain of business partnerships in mBusiness, in particular how partner firms involved in provisioning mobile applications and services manage the paradox of inter-firm conflict and co-operation. Drawing on insights from game theory and network theory, the paper proposes a nomological framework arguing that the management of two relationship domains, namely interaction management and partner management, is mandatory for future organisational prosperity.

Turning to the domain of business models, Jukka Kallio, Markku Tinnila, and Anne Tseng, all with the Helsinki School of Economics, Finland, provide us with “An international comparison of operator-driven business models”. The subject the authors deal with is quite timely, as we increasingly witness a shift in mobile operators’ strategies from voice services to data services. Operators hope that this shift will assist them in differentiating their product portfolios, capturing market share from their competitors, and reversing the downward trend of their average revenue per user. However, the global reality does not always match these expectations. While some business models are arguably successful (the most widely known example being NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode service in Japan), others have not been met with equal enthusiasm by the market – this even holds true for i-mode itself, at least when examining the story of its European introduction. The authors employ an exploratory research strategy that combines primary and secondary research to provide a systematic analysis and comparison of operator-driven business models in Japan, Korea, China, Europe, and the USA. The primary research question being asked is the extent and conditions under which successful business models can be replicated in other markets – a challenging question given the global aspirations of many large mobile network operators. Their findings suggest that a number of characteristics are common in successful business models around the world. These include handset design, a culturally matching service portfolio, effective billing systems, reasonable prices, and targeted marketing strategies. At the same time, government policy, technological constraints, and value chain dynamics are seen as major market-specific factors that affect a business model’s success likelihood.

The third paper is titled “Managing mobile provision for community healthcare support: issues and challenges” and is authored by Fitch and Adams, both with the University of Portsmouth, UK. The paper turns our attention to the application of mobile technologies in specific work contexts, in this case in community healthcare support. The paper draws on findings from interviews with health and social care professionals in the South of England and aims at examining the scope and potential of mobile support for community healthcare and identifying the challenges it involves. The authors contend that community healthcare offers much potential for lucrative and socially important mobile applications and services, such as providing mobile access to key clinical information, expertise, and patient administration to support community healthcare professionals. However, the authors also recognise that it may be challenging to make such services achievable, acceptable, and useful. These challenges focus more on reengineering supporting processes and work protocols rather than on particular technologies. While it is clear that many community healthcare professionals cannot perform their activity efficiently without some mobile technology support and despite the fact that the professionals themselves are open to such technologies, the authors maintain that practical considerations and usage protocols need to be addressed before the full benefits can be achieved. More specifically, it is postulated that any substantial shift from patient- to device-centred activity should be discouraged and that, given the political nature of healthcare, political will is likely to determine the success of mobile support for community healthcare more than technology itself.

Of a more technical nature, the fourth paper addresses the challenges of developing software agent-based mobile applications coupled with mobile services. The paper is titled “A mobile application based on software agents and m-agents” and it is authored by Zakaria Maamar of Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. A strong research interest is being generated in mobile web services (or m-services) as an extension of the well-known web services in the wireless world. The author asserts that considering mobile devices as computing platforms will soon become a reality as networks that make these devices reachable are in constant progress. Within such a globally wirelessly connected world, m-services will become of paramount importance for many organisations, especially when offering personalisation, time sensitivity, and location awareness. The paper addresses how software agents might be used to discover m-services in an open wireless environment, combine them, and execute them on mobile devices.

Finally, the last paper, by Andrea Rangone and Filippo Maria Renga of Politecnico di Milano, Italy, is titled “B2E mobile internet: an exploratory study of Italian applications”. In this work, the authors explore existing mobile internet applications automating sales force and field force activities in Italy. The authors have followed a methodology consisting of firstly identifying the case studies through interviews with key stakeholders (such as consulting firms, system integrators, application developers, and mobile network operators) and then interviewing the CIOs of the companies that have developed and use mobile internet applications. Sixteen such applications are identified and extensively reviewed. The paper describes the main features of each application, showing how they are affected by the network utilised, the devices used, and the usage mode (online or offline).

George M. GiaglisGuest Editor