812 Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Chapter 81 Service Discovery Techniques in Mobile E-Commerce Nandini Sidnal K.L.E.S. College of Engineering and Technology, India Sunilkumar S. Manvi Reva Institute of Technology and Management, India MOBILE E-COMMERCE Mobile E-commerce is trading of goods, services or information irrespective of location, using hand held devices for communication between all neces- sary parties to complete the necessary transactions in a wireless environment mostly through the Web. Today’s technology has advanced to a state, that hand held devices not only register the names and numbers but also track the user location and are a substitute for wallets and credit cards, in future they are bound to replace and go further, that they may ABSTRACT With the rising number of web services in mobile E-commerce, service discovery has become an impor- tant feature in the future of E-commerce for mobile users. A service in the network can be any software or hardware entity that a user might be interested to utilize. Service discovery is the action of fnding appropriate service provider for a requested service. When the location of the demanded service (typi- cally the address of the service provider catering services such as shopping, auctions, edutainment, etc.) is retrieved, the user may further access the service and use it. Service discovery is an emerging feld in the area of ubiquitous and pervasive computing owing to its mobile devices with limited resources. There are various service discovery techniques and protocols (proposed or/and already implemented) particularly tailored to specifc set of objectives. With service discovery, devices may automatically discover network services including their properties, and services may advertise their existence in a dynamic way. This chapter discusses various mobile E-commerce issues with major focus on service discovery issue. It elaborates on syntax and semantic based various service discovery mechanisms and concludes with future directions to service discovery mechanism. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-611-7.ch081