M-business in the financial sector is also fast expanding into capital firms from the insurance and securities segments, heralding uptake of a new m-business model.

Daewoo Shipping, having set up a remote quality control system capable of inspecting and ordering partner firms' products through wireless LAN late last year, recently introduced Block Movement Control System (BMCS), a Dot.net-based mobile processing management system.

BMCS is designed to control remotely data and information about block movements of workflow at the time of manufacturing. It is expected to save costs significantly by allowing users to develop work plans and forecast workflow using the real-time information about movement of work blocks.

Apparel distributor Sungju International has completed setup of a mobile store management system, which adopts Web-based point-of-sales (POS) system in the wireless environment. The new system links sales information that had been processed manually with backbone operation systems in real time, boosting efficiency of store management.

Taepyongyang, a firm specialising in women's cosmetics, has handed out personal digital assistants to some 100 of its beauty consultants so that they can use them for customer consulting and sales of products. The company plans to beef up the PDA-based mobile backup system if the test adoption proves successful.

Samsung Capital has recently set up a PDA-based sales force automation (SFA) system for the first time in the industry. For the new system, it has equipped some 250 sales representatives with PDAs, which can be used to simulate payment capabilities of clients based on credit information as well as check client credit status, evaluate and approve loan applications.