The development of location based services in mobile commerce

With the more than one billion cellular phones in the world in 2002, joined by other wireless handheld computing devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs) and pocket PCs, there are significant opportunities for mobile commerce growth. Although mobile commerce enables access to goods and services regardless of the location of either buyer or seller, in many situations the specific location of the buyer and seller is critical to the transaction. A host of new location-aware applications and services are emerging with significant implications for the future of e-commerce. Much like the experience with the dot corn era, however, the development of location-based services has fallen somewhat short of expectations. In this chapter, we attempt to provide a realistic assessment of the potential for location-based services, examining the market opportunity, technological origins, likely services, emerging policy issues, and potential future directions.