Mobile Services Revisited: An Analysis of ICMB 2006

This paper analyzes the 44 papers included in the proceedings of the 5th ICMB conference in Copenhagen 2006. The purpose of the paper was to investigate to what extent the conference fulfilled its objectives which was to compare previous expectations with present realities along the following four areas: (1) business models, (2) the influence of m-business on private and work life, (3) the impact of regulation, and (4) the re-composition of the value network. In the analysis we apply the well-known framework by Lyytinen and Yoo for studying nomadic computing. In addition to this we also classify the papers in relation to type of artifact investigated, application area, and research methodology. The analysis show that the main focus lay on the use and adoption of mobile services – over 60% of the papers address. Few papers address the impact of service on any level of analysis. Business model is a recurring topic in 17 of the papers. There is lack in theorizing of the artifact, e.g. many just study mobile devices, but do not describe what type they study.