Introduction to mobile phone programming

Abstract

Mobile phones got their name from their very first application, allowing people to make phone calls while being mobile. The communication architecture was dominated by base stations communicating with the mobile phones. Base stations were needed to enter the existing telephone networks and thereby allowing to communicate with fixed line communication partners. Furthermore, the base stations and the connected backbone allowed to communicate with other mobile users in different cells. In the beginning, referred to as first generation (1G) of mobile networks, there was no need for additional functionality, besides voice services, on top of the mobile phones. With the second generation (2G), changing from analog mobile systems to digital ones, enhanced services were introduced such as the short message service (SMS) and data connections to the Internet. But another important change took place: the split of network and service providers such that we have four major players in the mobile world as given in Figure 1.1. Before that, the network provider had the monopoly to decide which services (in this case it was only the voice service) are available on the phones. Most of the European network providers were still fighting their monopoly, while in Japan DoCoMo launched their i-mode service. The idea was to maintain a platform where third-party service providers could offer their services to the mobile phone customers using the DoCoMo network. The business case was based on a fixed-ratio split between the service and the network provider. In contrast to the WAP services in Europe, which was a big financial disaster, the i-mode took off and was very successful. From that time on the mobile market has been divided into four different players, namely the customer as the main target of the business, the network providers enabling to convey bits toward the customer, the service provider, and the mobile phone manufacturer. These four entities © 2007 Springer.