Location Based Mobile Advertisement, Mobile Application

Abstract

Handheld device’s popularity has increased many folds over the past 3-4 years. The mark has crossed 15 million nationwide, and the telecom sector is reckoned as the most growing sector in Pakistan at the moment. With a few rare exceptions, almost 80% of the educated personnel are carrying mobile phones or some other handheld computing device capable of communication via GPRS, Bluetooth etc. Such an environment has forced developers to come up with new and innovative ideas of mobile computing and automation.

Location Based Mobile Advertisement [1] is basically a business idea. LBMA is a network of bluetooth devices which work in collaboration to provide advertising and promotional content to customers. Mobile phones started as a concept of a phone with a feature of being wireless then technology advanced and we got Short Messaging Service [2]. Then with the growth and advancement of technology, companies started to put PDA features into it. Now we have phones with a 233Mhz processor, full TCP/IP protocol support, a 1.5 by 2 inch 65K Color LCD screen and a an operating system. The idea is to leverage this technology advancement and make use of the available features in the phones.

Thus through this system we as a team are looking forward for a system that can let customers view advertisements, directions and discount offers related to the shopping mall they walk into. When customers go out for shopping they want information about low priced offers, discounts and things they are looking for. A customer tries to save every penny he is spending, so our system will help them and the shop owners to get the right stuff to the right customer. To wrap up we want to leverage the technology in the mobile phones and provide different services.

The project used Bluetooth Technology, an increasingly popular technology for wireless networks. To implement the project, extensive study was needed, and therefore many books were consulted. Extensive searching on the Internet was also conducted, and there was hardly any website or article on the Internet which was not gone through.

Increasingly the mobile phone is the primary contact platform for today’s modern consumer. It’s always with you and it’s always on. And now mobile phones are widely used for a lot more than just voice and SMS – play games, listen to the radio, browse the web and even watch video on our handsets.

That is why we as team decided to undertake this as our final year project, and developed Location Based Mobile Advertisement, a unique Proximity Marketing system. And I am developing its first module Mobile Application.