Mapping the road for mobile systems development

Mobile devices such as smart mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other handheld computing devices have become very popular. The early findings about the use of mobile devices and mobile systems show that the mobile computing environment differs from the traditional desktop environment in significant ways. Several areas of computing, related to mobile devices, have surfaced over the last decade. These areas are said to be distinctively different from one another, yet they appear to overlap. Such areas are mobile computing, nomadic computing, ubiquitous computing, wearable computing and pervasive computing. This paper describes each of these areas of computing and identifies the design issues. The paper furthermore attempts to identify where systems developers should look for guidance for the development of mobile systems.