Bringing Mobile Applications To The Next Level

The most interesting thing to come out of the MWC in Barcelona this week is the multi-company announcement of Wholesale Applications Community.  A number of the world’s leading telecommunications operators and device manufacturers are trying to establish a simple route to market for developers in the increasingly complex world of mobile apps.

The huge questions is whether they can succeed.  This is the big non-Apple initiative that the industry has been mumbling about for the past 6 months.  Most operator out there understand that they have to consider an Apple based route to market.  But each of these also wants to have an alternative strategy that doesn’t depend on the iPhone.   The initial focus seems to be the creation of a common app development platform for developers.  This is a laudable idea, but the complexity is staggering – remember there are 1000’s of phone models, dozens of manufacturers and four or five technologies to consider.

The other side of this initiative is to create a common distribution store model that each one of these operators can plug into or white label.  I imagine this is going to face its own set of challenges ranging from a consistent approach to content ingestion & content management, to the important aspects of how revenue is shared back along the value chain, and how problems are resolved.

This is an area that the Forum has been working on for the past couple of years, so I’m quite excited by the prospect.  I would be keen to get the Forum involved at some level in this activity so we can bring our own key capabilities to the solution.  

The list of 24 initial members is quite impressive including Vodafone, China Mobile, Verizon, ATT, DT, Telefonica, Orange and Softbank are all members.  This is definitely one to watch!