
Wholesale ApplicationsCommunity
Will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide them with access to a customer base of over 3 billion customers.
The alliance aims to unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries to create a community based on openness and transparency to the benefit of all.
We believe our model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice.
Who’s involved?
A number of the world’s leading telecommunications operators and device manufacturers are launching an open global alliance, that will establish a simple route to market for developers and provide access to the latest and widest range of innovative applications and services to as many customers as possible worldwide.
Together, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with the aim of building an environment or ’wholesale applications community’ where innovative applications can be developed irrespective of device or technology.
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. We believe this model presents the most compelling format on the market where developers will thrive and customers will reap the benefits of greater choice. Furthermore, the GSMA is supporting this initiative.
Membership
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.
We expect this list to grow and we are inviting players from across the ICT industry, not only operators and developers, but also handset manufacturers and internet players to join forces.
Role and purpose of the alliance
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.
What this means for customers
For customers this means a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of devices than ever before.
What this means for developers
For the developer, particularly small developers, the alliance will create an environment in which they can flourish and create applications in a straight-forward and effective manner. Today, the route to market for developers is challenging requiring them to approach multiple operators. The alliance will provide a single gateway for developers to access a vast potential customer base (over two billion with limited cost to the developer and this in turn will provide the maximum possible return on investment for them.
In addition, the alliance will utilise existing technical standards, rather than creating new ones to allow developers to access operators’ assets, for example network capabilities or API’s (Application Programming Interfaces) more easily. In practice this means that developers will only have to create one version of their application and this can be used on multiple types of devices and operating systems (such as Symbian, Android, Windows etc) which is not the case today.
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