The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) – an alliance aiming to enable developers to write applications that can be deployed across multiple platforms and operators, and address a potential global market of more than 3 billion users – this morning announced it has released version 1.0 of its spec for developers (a month ahead of schedule) and named a bevy of new supporters.

Taking on the established might of Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market, WAC 1.0 (available here) is based upon JIL 1.2.2 (JIL was officially integrated into WAC on 1 October, following the announcement last July that WAC was to ‘acquire’ the assets of JIL). The release of the initial WAC spec beats a deadline of November, also set back in July.
 
Headed up by former JIL chief executive Peters Suh, WAC now has 15 operator members on its board; AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, KT, NTT Docomo, Orange, SK Telecom, Smart, SoftBank, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telekom Austria, Telenor, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. In addition, industry association the GSMA also has a position on the board.

A further six high-profile vendors have been announced as joining WAC at board level – Accenture, Ericsson, Huawei, Intel, Qualcomm and Samsung – although these companies are touted as being at ‘observer level’ and can attend board meetings but have no voting rights. Interestingly, it appears that WAC is keen for the launch of app stores to extend beyond operator ownership and into vendors, as a statement noted that both operator members and observer level (vendor) members will set “the strategic direction and evolution of WAC and will be able to launch WAC-enabled storefronts.”

WAC now claims total membership of 48 companies, a figure that is around double the original number announced at the launch of the initiative during this year’s Mobile World Congress in February. A closer look at the identity of these companies gives a clearer indication of WAC’s progress to date. New operator members America Movil, Bell Mobility, Bouygues Telecom, China Unicom, Hutchison 3 Group, KDDI, LG Uplus, MTS, Orascom Telecom, Rogers Communications and SFR join existing members AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KT Corporation, NTT Docomo, SK Telecom, Smart, SoftBank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telekom Austria, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone.

On the vendor side, WAC today announced three new ‘sponsor members’; Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu and LG Electronics. These sponsor members “have the ability to connect a retail store into the WAC wholesale platform in the same way as an operator member,” a spokesperson told Mobile Apps Briefing, as well as benefiting “from access to all of the technical working groups and to working technical documents, specifications and WAC code.”

Meanwhile new ‘associate members’ (who are able to attend working groups and access WAC documents, specifications and code) include Aplix, ASPire, Borqs, Cap Gemini, Innoace, LiMo Foundation, Myriad Group, Obigo, Opera Software and ZTE. The inclusion of the LiMo Foundation is an interesting move, given that the alliance has lost traction in recent months and in March sought to allign itself with WAC. In a statement today, the LiMo Foundation said that “all future releases of the LiMo Platform will support the WAC runtime, thereby enabling LiMo developers to distribute their applications across multiple WAC compliant stores.”

 

Handset support?

Although the initiative has been hugely successful at signing up the global operator community, there appears to be work still ahead on encouraging more handset vendors to publicly display their support. As we noted in a blog posting earlier this year, the ability for the device community to produce handsets in volume that support the initial WAC 1.0 specification by next May (the group’s target for rollout of commercial WAC-based app stores) will be key to the initiative’s early market impact.

The inclusion of Samsung and LG in WAC’s membership (the second and third-largest global handset vendors, respectively) is certainly a boost, as is the support of smaller device vendors Huawei and ZTE. But the current absence of the likes of Nokia, RIM, Motorola, HTC and Sony Ericsson as realistic potential supporters could be damaging. Indeed, Sony Ericsson is missing from today’s member list, despite being on the teamsheet when the initiative was announced last February. A spokesperson for WAC responded to this issue with the following statement: “WAC is currently involved in many discussions with different organisations. Sony Ericsson is one of those organisations.”

On a more upbeat note, the spokesperson added that today’s launch of the WAC 1.0 spec is evidence the initiative is ahead of schedule and that WAC expects “to meet the committed milestones that we have already outlined.” Having previously promised to hold its first developer event next month, the spokesperson noted that “developers are already creating widgets based upon WAC 1.0 and we will be doing outreach events to developers during November to widen the number of developers who have visibility of WAC.” The WAC representative also claimed that a January 2011 release of the final WAC 1.0 spec is still on track.
 
Once the final spec is available, this will be followed by more developments at the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress. Exactly twelve months after the initiative was first announced the group hopes that users of BONDI or JIL-compatible devices will be able to download apps available via WAC-based operator app stores. The event should also see WAC 1.0 demo devices on show, before the first release of commercial WAC 1.0 devices in May.

The full 48 member list as of today is: Accenture, Alcatel-Lucent, Aplix, América Móvil, ASPire, AT&T, Bell Mobility, Borqs, Bougyues Telecom, Capgemini, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson,  France Telecom, Fujitsu, Huawei, Hutchison 3 Group, Innoace, Intel, KDDI, KT Corporation, LG Electronics, LG Uplus, LiMo Foundation, MTS, Myriad Group, NTT DOCOMO, Oberthur Technologies, Obigo, Opera Software, Orascom Telecom, Oracle Corporation, Qualcomm Incorporated, Rogers Communications, Samsung, SFR, SK Telecom, Smart Communications, SOFTBANK MOBILE, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telekom Austria Group, Telenor, Verizon,  Vodafone, ZTE and the GSMA.

 

Justin Springham