China Research Laboratory

Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce (M-commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices such as cellular phone, personal digital assistants (PDA) known as next-generation e-commerce. M-commerce enables users to access the Internet without needing to find a place to plug in. The emerging technology behind M-commerce, which is based on the Short Message Services (SMS) and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), has made great strides in Asia and Europe.

This project extends the service scope of IBM's Websphere Commerce Suite (WCS) by enabling users to access WCS through mobile phones. The value propositions of this project are:

• Allows more people to use WCS more of the time
• Adds a new dimension to eBusiness
• Customers get WCS notifications/messages and can respond anytime, anywhere
• eBusinesses can use mobile phones for product promotion, ads, e-coupons, etc.
• Low-cost and easy-to-manage wireless solution
• Provide competitive differentiation

Bluetooth Application Exploration

This project explores the technology of device connection, access and management via the next generation short range wireless technology, bluetooth. This will not only find a new simple, easy, flexible and low cost way to connect home or office devices, but also change the way we use devices. By using this technology, simple, unitary function devices can be easily connected and make a more powerful system to accomplish functions which can not be fulfilled by the single device themselves. This will give user a simple, nature and consistent (such as using voice) to access and control devices. Some new technologies for bluetooth such as roaming and positioning are also being explored, and will offer new opportunities to develop new applications (such as location awareness content delivery).

E-Community Common Platform

The rapid development of Internet and emergence of high-speed broadband access network create a great potential market for e-Communities in those dense resident-population areas, especially in China, Korea, Hong Kong and other southeast countries. Many telecom and IT companies are competing to take up more market shares in this field. E-Community is an intelligent system integrating computer technology, as well as communication and control technology to provide various management and services such as property management, home and community security monitoring, home automation, communication services and Internet access. Currently most of work focuses on building infrastructure of broadband access network, but not on a software platform to support e-Community service and management. However, the software platform is important for e-Community construction. Therefore e-Community project is proposed not only to develop a common platform for various broadband applications in communities, but also take full advantage of IBM's state-of-the-art technology on e-business, system management and pervasive computing and expand usage for IBM's products on the market.

The purpose of e-Community Common Platform is to provide a total solution for network carriers, service providers and community property management companies. Through this platform, these companies can provide the basic community services such as property management, security monitoring and home automation. On the other hand, many new value-added services could be easily developed and configured according to users' requirements via the supporting modules and toolkits of the platform.