Mobile Computing and Networking

Introduction

In the 1990s, a new idea called Mobile computing emerged in the world of humanity. Ten years later, Scott McNealy, former CEO, Sun Microsystems emphasized that people were moving out of the Ice Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age, to the participation age. And on January 11, 2000, Dartmoth College professors Guanling Chen and David Kotz in their article “A survey of Context aware Mobile Computing Research” described mobile computing as a new future. “I do not need a hard disk in my computer if I can get to the server faster… carrying around these non-connected computers is byzantine by comparison” -told Steve Jobs , late chairman of Apple. Since then, Mobile computing has evolved from two-way radios that use large antennas to communicate simple messages to three-inch personal computers that can do almost everything a regular computer does (wordpress.com). It means people can connect wirelessly to the internet or to a private network almost anywhere. As long as a person has one of the devices capable of wirelessly accessing the internet, they are participating in mobile computing. Estimates suggest that in roughly five years the number of mobile computing devices will be about 10 billion, or 1.5 for every single person on the planet (Ernst & Young “Bring” 1). The field of mobile computing is becoming more and more prevalent throughout our daily lives. This can be seen from the increase in the number of smartphone users from 114 million to 250 million in just the one-year period between 2012 and 2013 (Okoye). Additionally, according to Okoye’s research, 78% of adults within the United States own a smartphone. Today, almost every single person utilizes mobile computing in some shape or form. However, business professionals all over the world have been utilizing mobile computing as an integral part of their daily activities for a number of years. Through the use of mobile computing individuals are able to be in constant connection to the Internet, which has significantly changed the way people do things (“Mobile Computing: A Study” 3). However, because of the quickly changing environment of mobile computing technology, the risks associated with mobile computing are constantly growing and changing. They key objectives of this paper are to define and analyze in detail about mobile computing and Networking.