Context-aware mobile applications design: implications and challenges for a new industry

Context-aware computing is slowly becoming the new mobile paradigm in which applications can discover and use information “out and about”. Typical sources of knowledge about context are the device’s location, data about the environment at large, the mobile device’s prior activity log and even the user’s biometrics. The mobile industry agrees that this paradigm improves the appeal and value of applications by personalising and adapting them to the context in which they run. However, capturing contextual information and processing it to enhance or create a new application is a daunting task: it involves scattered systems and infrastructures and an increasingly wide array of heterogeneous data, architectures and technological tools. In this paper, we explore and analyse existing mobile context-aware applications and the proposed frameworks that enable them. The paper aims to clarify the technological choices behind context-aware mobile applications and the challenges that still remain ahead for this area to fulfil the promises it offers