Towards an appropriate business model for m-commerce

Although the rapid growth of the mobile phone market makes companies very excited about the great potential of m-commerce, after the ‘dot.com’ crisis people are more sceptical and think it might just be more hype. There is still no single answer to justify either of these two opposite opinions. To achieve m-commerce success, people are looking for innovative ‘killer applications’ or extensions of existing e-commerce applications in a mobile environment. It is not, however, the application but the business model behind the application that really determines the success. So far we still do not fully understand what is the appropriate business model that could lead to the success of m-commerce. To search for a solution, we need to identify the fundamental technology differences between m-commerce and internet-based e-commerce. Based on this understanding, we develop a framework to analyse m-commerce business models along two dimensions: the key components and the taxonomy. We hope our framework can be used to help businesses in developing their m-commerce strategies and turning hype into real profit. © 2003 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.