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Profitability of Mobile Qualified Electronic Signatures

In 1999 the directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council was enacted, providing legal requirements for a common introduction of electronic signatures in Europe. So far the signature market has failed miserably. Mobile electronic signatures are often seen as a potential and promising way to provide market acceptance for electronic signatures. This paper builds upon an infrastructure for qualified mobile electronic signatures proposed by Rossnagel (2004) that does not require the mobile operator to act as a certificate service provider (CSP). The user can freely choose a CSP and add the signature functionality along with the required certificates later on demand. In this paper we will take a look at the economic feasibility of mobile qualified electronic signatures from the viewpoint of a mobile operator (MO) and try to predict his return on investment. We also examine potential revenues for CSPs using new business models as proposed by Lippmann and Rossnagel (2005) that have the potential to be far more successful than the current ones. Our prediction shows that mobile qualified electronic signatures can be quite profitable for a mobile operator as well as the CSPs.