Apple’s App Store challenged by 24 carriers worldwide

Tuesday, 23 February 2010 11:52  |  Michael Schwartz

Two dozen carriers worldwide have taken the opportunity of the Mobile World Congress to unveil what they describe as the “Wholesale Applications Community,” an “open international applications platform.” It is generally accepted that the lobby has been formed to respond to the success of the Apple iPhone App Store.

 Two dozen of the world’s largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), or what it describes as an “open international applications platform.” The platform is very obviously a response to Apple and its successful iPhone App Store.

Venue for the announcement was this week’s Mobile World Congress. In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three device manufacturers - LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson - are also supporting the initiative. The global subscriber base for all of these organisations combined is roughly 3 billion, easily the largest app-store initiative. WAC’s task will, however, be exceedingly complex because of the sheer scope and technologically barriers in uniting so many disparate platforms and operators.

WAC’s aims to create a wholesale platform for mobile apps that provides a single point-of-entry for developers, ie, a solution to the sector’s massive fragmentation problem. Common open standards will, it is hoped, allow developers to create apps across multiple platforms. The standards include JIL, which Verizon, Vodafone and China Mobile have been working on, and OMTP BONDI. Both are expected to evolve into a common standard within the next year. Ultimately, they pledge to work with the W3C standards bodies to create one solution for developers to create apps and port them across mobile device platforms and operators.

The full list of operators is: America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom Austria, MTN Group, NTT Docomo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, VimpelCom and WIND. The four operators in the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) mobile apps initiative – Vodafone, China Mobile, SoftBank and Verizon Wireless – are also included.

More info:

• www.wholesaleappcommunity.com