The Internet's arrived. The Net has changed everything, and nothing. Business has migrated to the Net, time has speeded up, expectations have been reset. And now there's a fresh rumble sounding down the technology road. The noise is all about mobile commerce. Is it just the massed empty stomachs of the technology crowd, eager for a new feast? Or is it the next vehicle to a brighter business future?

This chapter treats mobile commerce as a vehicle aboard which businesses of all kinds need to jump. We look at why the world is turning mobile–how the change to the mobile era is already well advanced and picking up speed. We consider how businesses can design opportunities in this emerging space by recognising the distinctive features of the mobile channel and respecting its differences from traditional channels. We present a new generic business model for mobile commerce that uses concepts of location, time, and mission as its touchstones. Customer relationships, and how they are created and owned in the mobile channel, are examined. We finish our survey of the space with a look at mobile commerce's headline effects on existing enterprise system costs and on individual users' interaction styles.

WHY THE WORLD IS TURNING MOBILE

We start our exploration of the business opportunities offered by mobile commerce with a portrait of the emerging mobile lifestyle, introducing some scenarios of wireless life that have already takenhold in markets around the world.