Wireless Devices and Applications

1. Wireless Devices and Applications Summarized from: Turban, Efraim, Leidner, Dorothy, Mclean, Ephraim, Wetherbe, James, Information Technology For Management - Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy, John Wiley & Sons, 6th Edition, 2009.

2. FOOD LION EXCELS WITH WIRELESS INNOVATIONS • The Problem • Food Lion grocer decided to distinguish itself from the competitor(A major competitor is Wal-Mart.)

3. FOOD LION EXCELS WITH WIRELESS INNOVATIONS(2) • The Solution • Company decided to use wireless technology. • Mobile checkstand • Mobile check-out POS terminal equipped with wheels that can be moved to any location. • Ability to expedite checkout time. • Personal scanner • Handheld device that is a POS terminal emulating the IBM checkout system. • The device show the price of the item and the running $ subtotal of all items bagged. • Enables sending messages to the customers while shopping, including special marketing offers. • The final bill is downloaded to the cash register. • Employee handheld devices • Execute inventory counts , enter customers to check prices and get product location and information while pushing their carts.

4. FOOD LION EXCELS WITH WIRELESS INNOVATIONS(3) • The Results • Speedier checkout is the main benefit since all the customer has to do is to pay.

5. MOBILE BANKING AND STOCK TRADING Merita Bank on Sweeden pioneered many services(Sadeh,2002), and Citibank in the United States has a diversified mobile banking service. Customer in such banks can use their mobile handsets to access account balances, pay bills, and transfer funds using SMS. Many banks in Japan allow for all banking transactions to be done via cell phone.

6. WIRELESS ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SYSTEMS • Micropayments • In Frankfurt ,Germany, for example, and took a taxi ride, you could pay the taxi driver using your cell phone. • Billing can be made to the customer’s bank or credit card account or to the mobile phone bill. Micropayment technology has wide-ranging applications , such as making payments to parking garages, restaurants, grocery stores, and public transportation. • Wireless Bill Payments • A number of companies are now providing their customers with the option of paying their bills directly from a cell phone. HDFC Bank of India (hdfcbank.com),for example, allows customers to pay their utility bills using SMS.

7. SHOPPING FROM WIRELESS DEVICES Customers who use Internet-ready cell phones can shop at certain sites such as mobile.yahoo.com or amazon.com. Restaurant food shopping from wireless devices between Motorola and Food.com. The companies offer restaurant chains an infrastructure that enables consumers to place an order for pickup or delivery virtually any time, anywhere.

8. MOBILE PORTALS A mobile portal is a customer channel, optimized for mobility, that aggregates and provides content and services for mobile users. The world’s best-known mobile portal, with over 45 million members, mostly in Japan, is i-mode from DoCoMo. The service provided by mobile portals include news, sports, e-mail, entertainment and travel information; restaurants and event information; leisure-related services (e.g. games, TV and movie listings); community services; and stock trading. a sizeable percentage of the portals also provide downloads and messaging , music related services, and health, dating, and job information. Mobile portals frequently charge for their services. The fields of mobile portals is being dominated by few big companies. The big player in Europe, for instance, are companies like Vodafone, Orange, O2, and T-Mobile; in United States the big players are Cingular, Verizon, and Sprint PCS.

9. Mobile Application for Sports In May 2006, Nike and apple introduce an iPod shoe called Nano that can provide real-time feedback on distance, time, and calories burned during a workout. A sensor and receiver embedded in the shoe provide a wireless connection to the iPod, with workout information stored on the device and displayed on the screen. Levi Strauss introduced a new line of jeans specially geared toward iPod users. The $200 trousers com complete with headphones, a joystick, and even a docking cradle.

10. A Superb Customer Service • The solution • San Francisco bus riders carrying an Internet enabled wireless device, such as a cell phone or PDA, can quickly find out when a bus is likely to arrive at a particular bus stop. • NextBus (nextbus.com) dynamically calculates the estimated arrival time of the bus to each bus stop on the route.

11. TELEMATICS AND TELEMETRY APPLICATIONS Telematics refers to the integration of computers and wireless communications in order to improver information flow. It uses the principles of telemetry, the science that measures physical remoteness by means of wireless transmission from a remote source (such as a vehicle) to a receiving station. Using mobile telemetry, technicians can distance maintenance diagnosis and preventive maintenance. Finally, doctors can monitor patients and control medical equipment from a distance.

12. BARRIERS TO L-COMMERCE • What a holding back the widespread use of location-based commerce? Several factors come into play: • Accuracy • Not as accurate as people expect them to be. • The cost-benefit justification • Benefits of l-commerce do not justify the cost of the hardware. • The bandwidth of GSM networks • GSM bandwidth is currently limited. • Invasion of privacy • When “always-on” cell phones are a reality, many people will be hesitant to have their whereabouts and movements tracked throughout the day , even if they have nothing to hide.

13. Illustrative Examples of RFID Use • Tracking people • In some Japanese schools, tags in back-packs or clothes track student’ entry and departure from school buildings. In Denmark, the Legoland amusement park offers parents a child-tracking system that combines RFID and Wi-Fi. Beginning in 2006, all news U.S. passports will contain an RFID tag, scanned upon entry and departure from the United States. • Other Uses • RFID embedded in cell phones will soon replace credit cards, cash, train passes, keys to your car and home, business cards, and more. DoCoMo of Japan introduced such a cell phone in 2004.

14. RFID and Privacy and Other Risks A major privacy concern is that when individual items are tagged, and they are taken by customers out of stores, it might be possible to track the movements of the customer (remote surveillance). Therefore, some recommend that the tags be removed before a sale is recorded. This increase the cost to the store. Tracking customers is currently very difficult since the readers have a very limited range from which they can be read. Tags may be counterfeited, duplicated, swapped, damaged , intentionally, disabled, or otherwise misused. The encryption protocols may be weak. Database can be misused, providing an opportunity for identity theft , fraud, harassment, and blackmail. Other risks are possible interferences of metals and fluids with the radio signals, tag quality may be uneven, cost if attaching the tags can be too high , and the cost of the tags is too high.