Smart Phone and Next Generation Mobile Computing

The Next Wave of Computing 29

to business professionals, in the hopes of riding another wave of

rapid user growth. To achieve this goal, new data-centric applica-

tions had to be introduced, and the cellular network itself had to

be upgraded to provide a higher data transmission rate. To this

end, GSM systems offered short message service (SMS), a pilot data

service that allows the exchange of short messages of less than

160 characters. Interestingly, SMS turned out to be a phenomenal

success in Asia and Europe, partly due to the billing models and

for some cultural reasons. Still, GSM suffers from a low data rate

of around 14.4 Kbps imposed by the underlying circuit-switching

transmission scheme.

On the road toward the third-generation, high-data-rate, ...