M-commerce: The state of the art, challenges, and cloud-based solutions

M-commerce has gained so much attention in recent years. M-commerce was originally coined in 1997 by Kevin Duffey at the launch of the Global Mobile Commerce Forum to mean “delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the customer's hand, anywhere, via wireless technology”. This portable form of commerce is of so much benefit for the stakeholders including the organizations and end-users. However, it has some challenges that need to be mitigated or totally addressed if possible. Cloud computing, specifically in its mobile form, is capable of presenting some solutions for the existent challenges. In this research, the most common challenges and weak areas of M-commerce is considered, and their corresponding cloud solutions are presented. Additionally, based on the available M-commerce reference model, a new layered structure including the cloud services is provided, and a new cloud-based M-commerce architecture is suggested accordingly.