B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

12.1. Introduction
Wireless Technologies 343
Business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) and businessto-employee
(B2E) have all involved wired interactions over telephone,
fax, local area network (LAN), Internet and intranet among entities and
individuals. Exceptions have been those rare field workers, such as UPS
deliverymen and the field employees of progressive companies, who
have employed wireless technologies.
E-commerce involves wired transactions through Websites and can
involve either businesses or individuals that take part in transactions
with other businesses. In contrast, mobile e-commerce (m-commerce)
involves the same types of entities, but the transactions are performed
wirelessly. M-commerce is still evolving rapidly while e-commerce has
reached a more mature stage. Table 12.1 outlines the salient technical
differences between e-commerce and m-commerce. In terms of devices,
content delivery standards and bearer networks, m-commerce is far
more complex than e-commerce. The purpose of this chapter is to
examine wireless technologies in the context of B2Bi.
Table 12.1. E-commerce and m-commerce — Technical components
Components
Devices
Operating System
Content Delivery
Standards
Browsers
Bearer Networks
PC
E-commerce
Windows, Unix, Linux
HTML
MS Explorer, Netscape
Navigator
TCP/IP
M-commerce
Smartphones (low and high
end), PDAs, pagers
EPOC, PocketPC, Palm
HTML, WML, HDML, cHTML
Phone.com's UP, Nokia
GSM, CDMA, TDMA, CDPD,
paging networks