The Wholesale Applications Community has the backing of many of the largest
operators but only three handset vendors so far
 

 
 

The GSM Association wants its industry-backed rival to Apple’s and other handset makers’ applications stores to be in commercial operation by February 2011, though developers won’t get access to documentation on the plans until September this year, only five months before that.
So far 24 of the GSMA’s 750-odd operator members have joined the Wholesale Applications Community, a one-stop-shop for apps developers which was announced at last February’s Mobile World Congress — but those 24 include some of the world’s biggest and most powerful service providers.
Behind the creation of WAC is a plan is to try to wrest back control of the applications market from the likes of Apple, Nokia with its Ovi, and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, and start earning revenue for the operators which are investing in new network capacity in order to deliver apps to their own customers.
“It’s not just about operators,” says Tim Raby, who is acting CEO of WAC. “It’s mostly about creating an environment for developers and users.”
WAC — pronounced “wack”, though likely to be replaced by a more businesslike name later in 2010 — is working with a mixture of strength and rewards.
For strength, it has its operator members: they include most of the biggest in the business, including Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone. WAC includes the four biggest operators in the US — AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile. It has two of China’s three operators — China Unicom as well as China Mobile — and two of Japan’s biggest, NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank. There are both KT and SK Telecom from Korea. South America is covered by its three most significant operators: América Móvil and TIM as well as Telefónica.
The key names still missing include China Telecom, KDDI, MTS, Reliance, Telstra and Zain — and the big Canadian operators, Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus, although those three are the testbed for a trial of a related GSMA project, OneAPI.
The potential rewards come from the access WAC can offer to members’ end customers. “We’re talking about delivering applications to multiple operators in each country,” says Raby. “The aim is to accelerate and expand the market for applications.”
The project is intended to allow developers to produce an application once only yet allow it to run on different networks and different handsets or terminals. “We’re offering scale, across many operators and phones,” says Raby. It means choice: “We’re not lining up one application with one phone — they become unlinked.”
Mobile operators have missed opportunities by being fragmented, allowing applications publishers to develop services for the iPhone or a limited number of other phones, with the revenue often bypassing the companies that own and invest in the networks. “The application world is increasingly decoupled from the industry that supports it,” says Raby. That means the industry does not invest in the bandwidth to deliver and support the applications. WAC “would enable the investment to support the applications”, he adds.
Though details are not yet agreed, it looks as if WAC will allow operators to charge for applications through their billing systems, with a percentage going to the developer. It will be up to operators how they present applications to their customers: WAC will not have a public presence to consumers.
WAC is still embryonic. The GSMA and member companies expect the WAC company to be formally set up in July 2010, with a board of directors. At the same time it will announce the business models for participating companies — operators, handset makers and application developers.
So far the only three handset makers in the alliance are LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, with Apple, Nokia and RIM among the notable absentees, though those involved in WAC hint that more members will follow.
“There are conversations with all of the key players,” says Michael O’Hara, the chief marketing officer of the GSMA. “Membership is open,” he says. WAC is also in “close dialogue” with operators beyond the initial list of 24.
The aim is “to remove the barriers for developers”, says Dave Gannon, vice president for strategic industry relations at Deutsche Telekom. Developers will be “a key determinant of success” for WAC.
And Raby emphasises that WAC wants to ensure that applications are available across all handsets and all platforms. “The plan is ubiquity.”
That will bring new customers for applications, he suggests, by allowing apps to run on cheaper devices. “Our job is to help as many people as possible.”
There’s a lot to be done. WAC wants to publish the first materials and documentation for developers in September 2010, with a developer event scheduled for November. That’s only two months before WAC “opens for business” at next year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
In the creation of WAC, the GSMA is taking its accustomed role in getting companies that are normally rivals — the operators — to work together for the benefit of the industry at large. “Interoperability is at the core of the mobile business today,” says Raby — though not so far in the apps world, which means that in this case there is the added challenge of trying to regain some of the market that operators have lost to others.
“It’s not just about operators,” he says. “There needs to be an ecosystem. It’s reasonable to get a return.” The idea is for developers to “write and submit once and deploy everywhere”. They should be able to “innovate applications without being limited to a particular device”.
But there’s a lot of work to do, and much ground to be made up. July, when the company is officially in business, is “a key date”, says Raby.
And there are the handset makers to be won over to the idea of WAC. “We’ve seen a great deal of innovation from the device vendors,” says DT’s Gannon. They will control the “discovery”, the way apps are displayed to customers, he admits. Some handset makers may be harder to win over than others. GTB