The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications companies committed to building an open applications platform, has announced its formation as a corporate entity, as well as the organisation’s leadership and board of directors.
They also outlined the business models and technology evolution path that will enable developers, operators and other commercial organisations to monetise applications and services.
Launched in February 2010, WAC wants to unite a fragmented applications marketplace and create an open industry platform that benefits the entire ecosystem, including applications developers, handset manufacturers, OS owners, network operators and end users.
The company announced that Peters Suh has been named the CEO of the WAC. Most recently Peters was the CEO of the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), a joint venture between China Mobile, SOFTBANK MOBILE, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone. Prior to JIL, Peters held a number of executive positions at Vodafone, Fremont Communications and AirTouch.
“Our goal is to create a wholesale applications ecosystem that will establish a simple route to market for developers to deliver the latest innovative applications and services to the widest possible base of customers around the world. We’re focused on establishing WAC as the first choice for brands and developers in the mobile ecosystem, ultimately delivering greater choice and value for the end user, the consumer,” said Suh.
The company also announced that Michel Combes, Vodafone Chief Executive Europe has been elected Chairman of the WAC, and Jean-Philippe Vanot, Deputy CEO, France Telecom has been named as Vice Chairman.
At launch, WAC will allow operators to distribute applications through their respective application storefronts and charge users through their existing phone bill. In this model, developers will set the application price and will receive a revenue share for the transaction.
The revenue share will be defined on an operator-by-operator basis. According to the company, this will ensure that revenue shares will be competitive in today’s application market. WAC is a not-for-profit organisation and will receive a small transaction fee for each application to cover its operating costs.
In the future, WAC wants to offer business models that enable additional purchases from within an application; leverage network capabilities, such as location, to enhance an application; and facilitate the serving of advertisements to end users.
"Developers will see great benefit in a single process through which they can create, distribute and profit from their applications on multiple retail outlets," said John Delaney, Research Director for Consumer Mobile with industry analysts IDC.
"Unification with JIL will prove a significant boost for the Wholesale Application Community’s efforts to achieve a global, open development platform."
WAC will publish its initial specification and components of its SDK to developers in November. The specification will be based on W3C standards.
WAC will also provide backwards compatibility for devices based upon the current JIL and BONDI specifications. Details of the developer roadmap and a preview of the WAC specifications will be available in September.
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