Article Preview
TopIntroduction
In this era of globalization there have been many improvements in technology especially in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT for short) field. The improvements in ICT have led up to the creation of smart devices. A smart device is an electronic device that has features such as voice and video communication, Internet browsing, social networking, and global positioning system (GPS for short). These devices are connected to the Internet via WiFi, 3G, and 4G.
“Smart devices are characterized by the ability to execute multiple, possibly concurrent, applications, supporting different degrees of mobility and customization and by supporting intermittent remote service access and operating according to local resource constraints” Poslad (2009). Smart mobile devices (SMD) has become indispensable for individuals nowadays, as it is considered as a common necessity. With the fast pace of technology advancement, SMD is no longer use only for ‘call and text’ but now able to perform other functions through a series of high-end applications, distinctive operating systems, fast connectivity and features that create a compact SMD. In short, a SMD is an all-in-one compact mobile gadget, an ideal substitution for all of these bulky devices where it provides convenience, equipped by advanced application programming interfaces (APIs for short) for running third-party applications to have integration with the phone’s Operating System (OS for short) and hardware.
The most common SMD-OS used such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone, Nokia’s Symbian, RIM’s BlackBerry OS and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. Such OS can be installed on different brands of SMD, like Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, except for Apple’s iOS, which is only available on Apple products, that is, iPhone. Each SMD can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime.
Brunei is a small but rich country with a population of only around 500,000 and a high GDP per capita, US$50,000 (CIA fact book) (Figure 1). Recently, the ICT penetration in Brunei is very high, among the highest in Asia, 79.4%, only 1% behind South Korea, which is the highest1.There is no doubt that future SMD market, particularly for Generation Y segmentation, including internet-based business applications, in Brunei Darussalam is quite interesting and increase continuously. As our finding, that each people prefer to have up to three SMD, it indicated that Brunei Darussalam potentially has 1 million – 2 million SMD market share, and it is changeable year by year, as respondents said that they intent to change their SMD after a year of used.
With the popularity and functions offered, SMD have seen an increase of demand (Park & Chen, 2007). SMD have been used in various areas such as education, health care, business, production and logistics (Nykodym et al., 2012). The increasing presence of SMD in Brunei, agencies (Government and NGO) initiatives to improve the ICT for supported it. In 2000, government expressed a wish to see Brunei to get on an e-government and e-business initiative through global information technology as a way to encourage economic development, also include the use of SMD (Centre for Strategic and policy Studies, 2008). In the Eighth Legislative Council (2012), it has been revealed that current studies and learning will be conducted by using SMD, in order to solve book shortages problems through digitalized it and stored in the digital book database center (Brunei Times, 2012).