While the market potentials and impacts of web-based e-commerce are still in the ascendant, the advances in wireless technologies and mobile networks have brought about a new business opportunity and research attention, what is termed mobile commerce. Commonly, mobile commerce is considered to be another new application of existing web-based e-commerce onto wireless networks, but as an independent business area, mobile commerce has its own advantages and challenges as opposed to traditional e-commerce applications. This paper focuses on exploring the unique features of mobile commerce as. Compared with traditional e-commerce. Also, there are still some limitations arisen in m-commerce in contrast to web-based e-commerce. Finally, current state of mobile commerce in Japan is presented in brief, with an introduction of several cases involving mobile commerce applications in today s marketplace.