Wholesale Applications Community - 24 operators unite making a new App Store

Leading Operators unite to unleash global apps potential. Twenty-four leading telecommunications operators have formed an alliance to build the world’s first open platform that delivers applications to all mobile phone users. For customers, the initiative will mean a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of handsets than ever before.

The new alliance, which represents more than three billion customers worldwide is inviting players from across the ICT industry, not only operators and developers, but also handset manufacturers and internet players to join forces to create an initiative based on openness and transparency.

The primary role and objective of the alliance is to create a ’wholesale applications community’ that will establish a simple route to market for developers, in turn, providing access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide. This alliance will deliver scale unparalleled by any application distribution ecosystem in existence today.

The members currently include América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson device manufacturers.

The alliance plans to initially use both the JIL and OMTP BONDI requirements, evolving these standards into a common standard within the next 12 months. Ultimately, we will collectively work with the W3C for a common standard based on our converged solution to truly ensure developers can create applications that port across mobile device platforms, and in the future between fixed and mobile devices.

The alliance will serve as one point of contact for the industry and is open to all relevant parties – from telecommunications operators and device manufacturers to internet service providers and application software developers.

For more information go to www.wholesaleappcommunity.com.