The technology to deliver mobile money services has been in place for over a decade, yet very few mobile money operations have reached scale. The purpose of the following research is to explore the possible reasons for this by analysing factors which impact the rollout and uptake of services. This is achieved through a case study of mobile money service offerings in the developing world in general and South Africa in particular. Findings of the research highlight the complexities of the challenge of reaching scale, particularly those relating to regulations, finding the appropriate business models and other socio-political factors. A further finding points to a possible lack of appropriate skills in the mobile money industry as a reason for services not reaching scale.

The global mobile telecommunications service market has witnessed an explosion of users after telecommunication liberalization, and the market is still growing. The global mobile phone subscribers will climb to 2 billion by the end of 2005, accounting for 1/3 of the global population. In the meantime, mobile communications system evolves into the 3rd generation system, which has wider bandwidth and higher transmission speed. Except for the pure voice services, mobile services increase variousvalue added services, helping mobile operators generate new revenues andfight back the declining voice ARPU. Consequently, mobile contentproviders, which creating, producing, aggregating and publishing themobile content, are attracted to this important emerging industry. In sum, mobile phone is a new media, which has great potential. At this moment, large mobile content providers grow quickly through acquisition. The global business scale is forming. On the other hand, giant brand media gradually enter the mobile content industry and enhancethe competition of the industry.After the telecommunication liberalization, Taiwan mobilesubscribers had grown dramatically in the late 1990s and now the market ismatured.Therefore, the value added services are more important to the mobileindustry. However, compare to the other countries, Taiwan market islimited and lack of economic of scale. Also, Taiwan subscribers do not get used to the mobile Internet, and the voice service is the most part of usage. The percentage of mobile data revenue is 5% only, far below that of Koreaand Japan. The whole environment is unfavorable to the mobile contentproviders.To break through the development bottleneck in Taiwan, this researchoffers the following suggestions.(1) The large mobile content aggregators / publishers should establish thebrand awareness and customer loyalty, based on the stable,differentiate, and various content products, convenient market channels,and superior community management.(2) The smaller mobile content providers with limited resources shouldverify and reinforce the core competence, look for the complementaryresources setting up an agreement or alliance to enhance thecompetitive advantage.(3) Content providers should think about the global oriented products whendesigning the product, which is favorable for export.Besides, the mobile operators and government should play animportant role to establish the friendly environment to boost the mobile content industry. 1. Only integrated business platform can satisfy users expectations of MC and such platforms providers hold the role of value distributor in MC value net. 2. Leaderships are proved again the key driving force to lead corporate exploring MC opportunities, especially the leaders¡¦ vision and strategic move of focusing on business platform rather than product activates new core competences which can generate new values. 3. Integrality of MC business platform determines its competition advantages, while the extensibility of which determines its potential market scale. 4. Products or serviced with clear core functions, simple operation and easy user interface will win the MC game. Sophisticated and complicated integration products only brings hurdle to the majority of end users. 5. Right tariff model turns the MC business platform to positive cycle. Challenge to new MC business platform providers is to convince relevant partners a beneficial intergrowth model and, on the other hand, accept ion of user value oriented tariff model, e.g. flat rate, to lower down users hurdle to adopt new service. Keywords ¡G Mobile Commerce, Business Model

Research shows how M-Commerce has managed to find its way to previously inaccessible parts of the world as a major Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tool for development due to widespread introduction of mobile phones in remote areas. M-Commerce has offered valuable advantages: anytime, anywhere, more personal, more location-aware, more context-aware, more age aware, always online and instant connectivity. But this is not without its problems, of which security is high on the list. The security issues span the whole M-Commerce spectrum, from the top to the bottom layer of the OSI network protocol stack, from machines to humans. This research proposes a threat-mitigation modular framework to help address the security issues lurking in M-Commerce systems being used by marginalised rural community members. The research commences with a literature survey carried out to establish security aspects related to M-Commerce and to determine requirements for a security framework. The framework classifies M-Commerce security threat-vulnerability-risks into four levels: human behaviour and mobile device interaction security, mobile device security, M-Commerce access channel security, wireless network access security. This is followed by a review of the supporting structures or related frameworks that the proposed framework could leverage to address security issues on M-Commerce systems as ICT4D initiatives. The proposed security framework based on the requirements discovered is then presented. As a proof-of-concept, a case study was undertaken at the Siyakhula Living Lab at Dwesa in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa in order to validate the components of the proposed framework. Following the application of the framework in a case study, it can be argued that the proposed security framework allows for secure transacting by marginalised users using M-Commerce initiatives. The security framework is therefore useful in addressing the identified security requirements of M-Commerce in ICT4D contexts.

The evolution and growth of e-commerce has had a major impact in the daily living for the past few years [28]. It has brought and introduced new ways of trading and doing business. It enabled customers to negotiate business deals with companies and come into agreement about the services and goods to be purchased; and even come to the finalization and conclusion of the deals without ever being in the same place or meeting during all those negotiations. The e-commerce systems target the desktop or personal computers (PC s) as the hardware platform for clients. With all such good features and benefits e-commerce has, there is, to mention the least, one limitation that it has and that is mobility . People would still want to engage themselves in business deals whilst mobile. Mobile commerce or m-commerce appears into the scene to complete the journey started by e-commerce, thus it is seen as an extension of e-commerce [21]. Many services have migrated from the traditional e-commerce to m-commerce and that has allowed customers and clients to have access to their services whilst mobile or in motion. The lack of mobility in students services is being seen as a hassle and a problem by some students as they are forced to be fixed in one point at a time in order to get their services. The dissertation aims at addressing the service-related problems students encounter due to the lack of mobility in the University campus. It intends to develop a prototype called Open Mobile Student Portal that would demonstrate how some of the student services could be rendered in the mobile environment. The students could be able to get their balance or fees statements via their cell phones instead of having to go to the finance department in order to get their balance statement. Also, some library services could be rendered in the mobile environment so as to enable students to search for books in the library databases and book such books using their cell phones. / Professor Sebastiaan von Solms

Advancement in information technology has influenced various aspects of human lives. The penetration of information technology is likely to increase in future. Therefore, it is imperative that one should be aware of the factors, which encourage or discourage customers towards use of information technology and related products and services. With reference to e-commerce, organizations should analyze preferences of consumers in mobile-commerce environment and based on their findings, should adjust their product or service accordingly. The current research was based on the future research areas highlighted by Pantano and Priporas (2016) and covered the limitations of their study using a larger sample (150 customers) using the context of Pakistan. Shahid et al. (2015) Highlighted that mobile-phone industry of Pakistan is one of the vibrant industries of the world. The mobile-density of Pakistan is one of the highest of Asia. The findings of this research revealed different dimensions of independent variables. For perceived ease of use, these dimensions were understandable and easier for one to become skillful in using MBA. Likewise, for perceived usefulness, these dimensions were opportunity of processing more banking transactions and always available. Further to this, for innovativeness of user, these dimensions were being an unconventional person, prefer to experiment new things in life and prefer to obtain information about new products. Likewise, for design of application, these dimensions were using MBA is secure, using MBA has a pleasant experience on my mood, easier to navigate MBA, can customize MBA according to my needs and MBA gives me an opportunity to compare charges with competitors. Finally, for finance cost these dimensions were using MBA saves transportation cost, to and from stores and using MBA saves time of visiting Bank. In addition, this study helped in identification of relative importance of different independent variables on the dependent variables. It was revealed that perceived usefulness is the most influential factor which influences future usage intentions of the people whereas design of application is least influential factor. Likewise, finance cost and innovativeness of users are also important factors. It was suggested that MBA providers should focus on female segments as well, create awareness of MBA among older people, provide MBA in native language, and focus on promoting MBA using different dimensions such as perceived usefulness and cost efficiency. Moreover, this research contributed to previous research in various forms including identification of important dimensions of select variables as well as relative importance of perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, innovativeness, design of application and cost. Researcher identified various research limitations. Future researchers should overcome these limitations.

When developing and aiming to achieve success in the area of mobile commerce, user acceptance and usage are key aspects for consideration. The key aim of this thesis is to explore a way to understand and explain the issues related to users’ adoption of m-commerce, by revision of Ventakesh et al.’s (2003) United Theory of Acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) for the Saudi context. This thesis examines a conceptual model in three studies. The first study aims to empirically validate the research model and hypotheses, by conducting a quantitative questionnaire survey of 574 participants. The results emphasise that cost, effort expectancy and performance expectancy all affect the intention to use m-commerce. In addition, it was found that age has an impact on usage. Subsequently, the author narrows down to confirm the finding and applies the same revised model to an m-commerce application, a mobile network service. The study collected data from 363 participants, and confirmed the findings. Based on the first and second study results, the first model was revised to remove insignificant factors, and a personal innovativeness construct was added. The incorporation of this aspect was dependent on the findings from the other studies. The new revised model was examined on one social network service, namely Twitter, with 1,252 participants being surveyed. The final result was that all the hypotheses were supported, emphasising that Personal innovation, Cost, Performance expectancy and Effort expectancy all considerably affect the intention to use Mobile Social Network Services (MSNS’s). In this regard, usage intention actually decides utilisation. The outcomes from this research are considered valuable in the fields of m-commerce and telecommunications. This research has created a conceptual model for studying m-commerce in Saudi Arabia. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings have been discussed and offer recommendations for future research directions.

Seminario para optar al grado de Ingeniero Comercial, Mención Administración / No autorizada por los autores para ser publicada a texto completo / Pese al excepcional desarrollo de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones en las últimas dos décadas, especialmente los últimos 5 años debido a la aparición masiva de los dispositivos móviles, y la rápida adopción de tecnologías como el Internet, la transición desde el e-commerce al m-commerce entre empresas y consumidores particulares (B2C) no ha sido el esperado, si bien hay evidencia clara de su crecimiento a lo largo de los años, la explosión total no se ha logrado. Esta situación ha determinado el creciente interés por parte de las empresas y sus altas gerencias, además de grupos científicos e investigadores, para encontrar respuestas del porque la adopción de esta nueva tecnología no ha sido el esperado, dada las ventajas que en el papel ofrece este nuevo canal de compra. Por esta razón, el responder la pregunta de ¿Qué factores contribuyen a que los consumidores adopten el comercio móvil o m-commerce para realizar sus compras? , es la parte crucial de este trabajo de investigación. Para los investigadores, responder a esta pregunta ha sido más complicado de lo esperado, ya que cada cultura y país reacciona distinto a este tipo de estímulos y, sumado a que, las técnicas históricas de ventas no son aplicables de igual manera para las ventas a través de dispositivos móviles. A pesar de que existen diversos modelos que ayudan a responder la pregunta planteada anteriormente, hemos escogido un modelo de adopción de nuevas tecnologías que se basa en las percepciones de los usuarios y/o potenciales usuarios en entornos similares, ya que permite abordar el problema de mejor manera y nos permitirá ofrecer respuestas satisfactorias desde el punto de vista de la teoría, y también visto desde lo práctico. Este trabajo de investigación, por lo tanto, tiene como objetivo principal plantear un modelo de adopción del m-commerce (B2C) en Chile, mediante el enfoque de las percepciones de los usuarios. Además se realizará un cruce integrador de la literatura disponible de modelos de adopción de nuevas tecnologías, y especialmente la nueva literatura sobre mobile commerce. Todo esto para identificar factores determinantes que nos permitan saber qué esperan y qué les interesa a los usuarios y potenciales usuarios chilenos, y que predigan la intención de compra a través del m-commerce en Chile. Intención de compra a través de M-commerce La estructura de este trabajo de investigación se compone de cinco grandes partes, divididos en capítulos. Las cinco partes se dividen en: Introducción al tema de Investigación, Desarrollo del Marco Teórico, Diseño de la Investigación, Análisis Empírico y Exposición de las Conclusiones. La distribución numeral de estas partes está lógicamente distribuida en 11 capítulos. Los capítulos 1, 2 y 3 corresponden a la primera parte del trabajo, el capitulo 4 y 5 a la segunda, los capítulos 6 y 7 a la tercera parte, el capitulo 8 y 9 a la cuarta parte y, finalmente, el capitulo 10 y 11 corresponde a la ultima parte y final del trabajo. En el capítulo 1 se incluye el primer acercamiento planteamiento del problema de investigación, así como a los objetivos de este trabajo de investigación. Acá se incluye una introducción del m- commerce, desde su inicio como parte del comercio electrónico hasta su análisis por separado. Además, incluye una introducción a los modelos de adopción tecnológica de comercio electrónico B2C, la justificación del tema de investigación y el planteamiento del problema de la misma. En el capítulo 2 se realiza un análisis de los antecedentes históricos del m-commerce, y su situación actual, en Europa, Estados Unidos, Latinoamérica y Chile en particular. En cada uno de ellos el mobile commerce se ha desarrollado de distinta forma, ya que la cultura es un determinante del comportamiento de los usuarios. Finalmente, para terminar la primera parte del trabajo, el capitulo 3 incluye los objetivos de la investigación, principales y secundarios. En los capítulos 4 y 5 se aborda el marco teórico de la investigación. En el capítulo 4 se profundizan los modelos de adopción de tecnologías, ofreciendo perspectivas históricas de su origen y su desarrollo a través del tiempo. Los modelos que abordamos son los que, luego de analizar la información disponible, nos parecen los más relevantes. Estos son: Teoría de Difusión de Innovaciones (TDI), Teoría de Acción Razonada (TAR), Teoría del Comportamiento Planeado (TCP), Teoría Descompuesta del Comportamiento Planeado (TDCP), Teoría de Aceptación de Tecnologías (TAT) y la Teoría Unificada de Aceptación y Uso de Tecnologías (TUAUT). En cada uno de ellos se detallan los factores relevantes y se realiza un análisis a profundidad. En el capítulo 5, ya presentados algunos modelos importantes, presentamos los factores relevantes que utilizan los modelos expuestos para el caso de nuestro trabajo, el mobile commerce. Estos factores se categorizan en 4 grupos: factores motivacionales, factores de inhibición, factores intrínsecos y extrínsecos. Así, el capítulo 6 se presenta, como resultado del trabajo de análisis anterior, la propuesta de un modelo unificado de estudio de intención de compra a través de comercio móvil entre empresas y particulares. Ya planteado el modelo, el capitulo 7 explica el Intención de compra a través de M-commerce diseño de la investigación, el que determinará la metodología del análisis que se efectuará. Se formulan las características de la investigación, que es de carácter social, del tipo exploratorio (input para futuras investigaciones) y basada en métodos empíricos, necesitará de un estudio empírico, de diseño cuantitativo, que se llevará a cabo a través de técnicas de análisis con múltiples variantes (multivariado). También en el capítulo se describe el alcance de la investigación –compradores y no compradores por m-commerce en Chile–, el mecanismo de recolección de datos (muestreo por conveniencia) a través de encuesta en línea, y características de los factores revisados en el capítulo 5. En el capitulo siguiente, se analizan los resultados obtenidos de la población muestral que participó en la investigación, a través de la encuesta. Este análisis incluye un contraste con las hipótesis de la investigación planteadas anteriormente. Finalmente, la ultima parte del trabajo incluye en el capítulo 9 una serie de limitaciones del modelo, ya que esta investigación es un intento por replicar la realidad y se utiliza una muestra del total de la población, por lo tanto, es claro que el modelo tendrá ciertas limitaciones, que no restan su importancia para obtener información relevante para las empresas a la hora de plantear su modelo de comercio móvil, si es que no lo tiene, o ajustar lo que actualmente maneja. El capitulo 10 incluye tendencias del m-commerce, estas se obtuvieron de dos formas. Primero, a través de una investigación de los datos disponibles en revistas especializadas, estudios e investigaciones de distintas universidades y páginas web de sitios relacionados. Y segundo, con entrevistas a expertos en el tema del comercio electrónico y marketing digital, a través de un cuestionario que se adjunta en los anexos de este trabajo de investigación. Por último, el capitulo 11, se registran las conclusiones obtenidas a lo largo de este estudio. Recogiendo los resultados alcanzados en el análisis empírico se ofrece una evaluación del grado de alcance de los objetivos planteados en el capítulo 3, para a continuación presentar las contribuciones tanto teóricas como metodológicas y prácticas que se pueden extraer del trabajo de investigación realizado. Estas son frutos de los análisis de información disponible, de los modelos que se analizaron, de los resultados del modelo planteado y de las tendencias del m-commerce en Chile e internacionalmente. Las principales conclusiones obtenidas tanto a través del estudio teórico como de los resultados del análisis empírico realizado. Estas conclusiones son presentadas tanto desde un punto de vista general como con respecto a los diferentes factores de la intención de compra a través de mobile commerce entre empresas y usuarios en Chile (B2C), destacando las implicaciones prácticas en base a los resultados obtenidos.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology. / Department of Computer and Information Science

The convergence of mobile commerce and internet technologies has promised users unprecedented convenience and greater enjoyment. Over the past few years, the development of mobile information and entertainment services (MIES) has been phenomenal. Recently, research has been conducted into ways toward better acceptance of these services by users. However, many of these studies are technical driven, without discussing important end user needs. To understand users' perception associated with mobile information and entertainment services the author extended and empirically tested a new antecedent model of Perceived Playfulness an intrinsic motivator toward technology acceptance by users, based on previous research. It has been shown that user's Perceived Playfulness toward information technologies has a direct impact on his/her subsequent use. Using the new antecedent model of Perceived Playfulness, the author argues users' Autotelic Personality, Perceived Service Quality, Perceived Technology Compatibility, their Motivation for Using and tolerance of Social Influence affect their Perceived Playfulness when interacting with MIES. A questionnaire was administered to students in business and computing schools at Auckland University of Technology. The closed-ended questions within the questionnaire were used to validate the proposed research model. The data were analyzed using Partial Least Squares. Most of the proposed hypotheses were supported, rendering several significant findings in this thesis. In this study, it has been found that individuals who are more innovative and confident about using MIES are more likely to develop a positive image toward these services. They also value services that are useful and easy to use and demonstrate high enthusiasm for more personalized mobile services. More importantly, their perceptions toward MIES can be further reinforced if their mobile phone functionalities are highly compatible with these services. Therefore, service providers should strive to create a seamless MIES experience for users. Furthermore, given that mobile phones have their own strengths and limitations, the motivation behind user's choices of various applications becomes an important issue for service providers to consider. It has been shown that the importance of service attributes vary with user's motivations of using MIES. This study therefore focuses on several important end user issues which are not well explored in the research of mobile internet services. Overall, this study contributed to existing research into user s perception toward MIES as an information technology based on his/her intrinsic motivator. Several important antecedents have been identified to influence user's Perceived Playfulness in this context. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are considered at the end of this thesis. Implications are also discussed.

Because of recently speeding up populization of the third generation mobile service, people raise the interest of researching mobile commerce again. This research will focus on studying the important factors of developing of mobile commerce, the relation of those factors, and the reason why mobile commerce could only success in Japen and Korea. When 1999 people start to pay much attention to research the mobile commerce, most telecommunication providers in developing country have highly investment on mobile service. But only Japenese telecommunication providers gain success at that time. During this period, academic circles and industrial circles constantly have research reports about mobile commerce. If we read these reports by their published years, we may find a revolving phenomenon: firms involving in developing m-comerce gained failure => related reports A published, and proposed some reasons of that failure and their suggestions => firms fixed their action by those reports, tried to develop m-cpmmerce again, but still faced failure => related reports A published, and proposed some reasons of that failure and their suggestions => firms fixed their action by those reports, tried to develop m-cpmmerce again, but still faced failure. So this research tries to probe into the m-commerce by study the history of developing of m-commerce, including collecting the firms¡¦actions and perspectives and the representive literatures and discussions. This research also believe that including this report, we haven¡¦t understood the m-commerce thoroughly. And the m-commerce is also changing by the increasing of bandwidth and the developing of new applicatons. And that the developing of m=-commerce needs the telecommunication firms, cellular phone firms and contant firms to collaboration to match the users¡¦pattern of each country. Depanding on the three factors above, we believe that we should hold a systematic and overall point of view to understand the m-commerce, not simplely by several key success factors or key failure factors. Depends on the case study in chapter 4, we have concluding a systematic analysis model. And we also compare the successful developing of Japenese and Korean m-commere. Finally we provide three dimensions of evaluatipn the developing project of m-commrce.