February 15th, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »
Something interesting is about to happen as 24 operators world-wide have shown the intention to create a Wholesale Applications Community. This community is a new platform for app and game delivery.
America Movil, 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, Telefonica, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind are committed to create an ecosystem for the development and distribution of mobile and internet applications irrespective of device or technology. They are even backed by vendors like SonyEricsson, LG and Samsung.
"The GSMA is fully supportive the Wholesale Applications Community, which will build a new, open ecosystem to spur the creation of applications that can be used regardless of device, operating system or operator," said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the Board, GSMA. "This approach is completely in line with the principles of the GSMA, and in fact leverages the work we have already undertaken on open network APIs (OneAPI). This is tremendously exciting news for our industry and will serve to catalyse the development of a range of innovative cross-device, cross-operator applications."
Jonathan Arber, Senior Research Analyst at independent analyst house, IDC, said: "Attracting and retaining developers is vital for any application store offering to succeed. However, mobile application developers currently face a high level of fragmentation in the industry, in terms of both technology platforms, and individual operators' working practices. Developers want to meet the largest possible addressable market, as efficiently and painlessly as possible, and the Wholesale Applications Community initiative can meet these criteria by providing a simple, single point of access to a large number of operator storefronts. The initiative should also help to drive uptake of existing, open standards among developers, operators and manufacturers, thereby reducing fragmentation and benefiting the whole industry."
The alliance will start off by using JIL and OMTP BONDI but will, with the help of W3C, create a common standard within the next 12 months. Informa’s analysts commented on this new situation;
Mark Newman, chief research officer at Informa Telecoms & Media comments, "I believe that the operators behind the inititiative are hoping to capture the mass market for mobile Internet services. Apple and RIM are already dominating the high end of the smartphone market but this only accounts for about one in five mobile users in Europe or North America. If operators can bring out euro100 devices with a good mobile internet experience they may be able to sell data plans to more low-end users.
However, I do question whether such a large group of mobile operators will be able to achieve the level of cooperation and integration required to make this initiative a success. Some of these operators (for example AT&T and Sprint) are fierce competitors and have always tried to find ways of differentiating themselves in order to win market share.
There is also the issue of whether developers will lend their support to the initiative. They are more interested in developing apps for Apple and Android and have historically distrusted operators because of the unfavourable revenues share deals that have been on the table. A number of the developers that we have spoken to would rather operators keep out of the applications development community entirely."
Guillermo Escofot, senior analyst adds, "One of the biggest challenges facing mobile operators in the app-store space is competing with handset and OS players in global reach. The Wholesale Applications Community initiative unveiled today by the GSMA attempts to address this challenge but operators will need to move rapidly to enable the "single point of entry" for developers sought by the initiative if they are to stand any chance of regaining some of the ground they have lost on the mobile-content front to the likes of Apple and Google. There have been other well-intentioned GSMA initiatives to get operators to work together to enable global ecosystems for services that have bared little fruit. As well as struggling with global reach, operators struggle to compete in terms of agility and the brand "coolness" necessary to attract a wide pool of developer talent."
More information can be found at the dedicated website.
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