Mobile Internet Technologies 1

WEEK 1

The first aspect that really struck me as striking was the list of mobile applications that was displayed. They seemed very comprehensive covering various domains. I felt that a list like that would be very useful, not just for understanding the business idea but also for using them in the future as I am a smart phone user. I decided that I would get a first-hand feel by actually downloading as many apps as I could and then use the concepts taught in class to evaluate the apps.

The concept of developing our own mobile phone app was very challenging and exciting. It was something we had never done before in MBA and I instantly decided to do my best and started planning out the sector/industry where it could be used. As mentioned above, being a smartphone user who constantly looks out for various apps to gain more and more utility the idea of me designing an app was very interesting.

The theory started with a brief of the ecommerce industry. We discussed the ABC of business and its building model. The 3-dimensional model – Process, Product and Commerce made a lot of sense. This was followed by differences between ecommerce and m-commerce. The differences were critical in understanding the rest of the concepts we were to learn. The discussion then completely shifted to m-commerce from then on. The successful components of a mobile application were identified to be strong architecture, good process models and understanding the user needs and providing the best value to them. The three major aspects/value that a mobile business offers were identified to be Location, Utility and Urgency. As the words suggest, these are the three aspects that one would expect from a mobile application. The related facets of mobility that we discussed were:

·         Location Independence Mobility

·         Time Independence Mobility

·         Customer Centric Services

·         Tailoring Information and Services to a specific context

The medium of mobile business can cover the following areas – Communication, Location, Information and Payments (CLIP).

For our group project, we decided to choose an m-commerce related app. We believed that for a company to make a really good app, the business idea or money making aspect is a very important motivation factor. Hence any app to boost sales of its products and thus revenue would fit perfectly into that idea. We also wanted to do things a little differently and hence decided to adopt green technology in some form or other.