The Wholesale Applications Community, an industry group looking to “increase the overall market for mobile applications,” today announced it now has 48 member companies, up from 16 prior to today, and the first version of its developer specification. Notable and new members to the group include mobile operators such as China Unicom, Hutchison 3 Group, and KDDI, plus Opera, the third-party mobile browser company. The initial spec released today is roughly a month ahead of schedule for the WAC, and is based strongly on the Joint Innovation Labs assets the WAC acquired earlier this year.
The Wholesale Applications Community was first announced earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress event. We covered the news of this largely carrier-based organization back then, and after browsing a PDF of the specification today, I’m inclined to agree with my colleague Colin Gibbs. Back in February, he noted that “the WAC is whack(ed)” and an industry standard approach meant to reduce app fragmentation doesn’t stand a chance to compete against the growing platform ecosystems:
The concept of “write once, run anywhere” is a compelling one, but it’s one that’s never come close to being realized in mobile. And thanks to the proliferation of new smartphone operating systems and an ever-increasing number of superphones on the market, there’s no chance the WAC will be able to change that.
So why might the WAC be a lost cause in a world of smartphones and application-specific mobile app stores:
Got widgets? While the new WAC specification for developers is only in its initial state, at this point, it’s not really about applications; it’s about widgets. Apple doesn’t currently allow widgets in iOS and if it ever does, such widgets would inevitably come from the iTunes App Store. Google Android devices already support widgets, as do Nokia’s Symbian devices. All three of these companies already have what the WAC offers and then some, since they each provide mobile app stores as well. The WAC indicates that its app store is targeting an audience of over 3 billion, which tells me it’s looking for widgets on feature phones. At some point, that market will dry up due to smartphone adoption.
Handset makers want to be different, not the same. Although Samsung and LG are WAC members, notably absent are handset makers Apple, Nokia, RIM, Motorola, HTC and Sony Ericsson. This further emphasizes the feature phone mindset of the WAC, but raises another important point. Every one of these non-member handset makers are striving to differentiate themselves through hardware and software. If the Samsungs and LGs of the world plan to compete against each other, why participate in a shared ecosystem that can be found on competing devices? Put another way: If a consumer can get an LG phone with the same widgets as a Samsung phone, how does LG compete against Samsung in this situation?
Carriers working together? Nah. A central key to success for the WAC is getting carriers to work together by agreeing on application standards for handsets that are built by others. Call me skeptical, but when have mobile operators ever agreed on anything that doesn’t benefit only themselves as business entities? Look at CDMA vs GSM, LTE vs WiMAX or unlimited vs tiered mobile data plans for some quick examples. If those don’t convince you, just ask yourself how many carrier-branded solutions we need to watch digital media on our handsets. They all do the same thing as free or third-party apps, but carriers offer such services as value-add subscriptions to boost revenues.
Standards already exist. The new WAC developer spec is completely based on existing standards, such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. These standards are already usable by devices running webOS, Android, and Symbian^3, to name a few platforms. Reshaping existing standards is akin to saying the Java approach of “write once, run anywhere” isn’t really a run-anywhere technology, but it can be if the WAC standards are followed. Between Java and cross-platform frameworks such as Nokia’s Qt, not to mention current and future standards like HTML and HTML5, is there really a need for more standards simply because some in the industry missed out on the app store explosion?
From a developer’s standpoint, I see what the WAC could offer in the future: a Utopian scenario allowing devs to write software once and have it work across multiple devices on different carrier networks around the world. But such devices are limited to feature phones, which are getting supplanted by smartphones, whose users are far more likely to click and buy full-featured apps in addition to widgets. Sure there’s still plenty of money to be made from feature phones if you’re a widget developer, but you don’t need the WAC to earn a buck from such efforts, and GetJar, the world’s second biggest app store that has already delivered over a billion mobile app downloads, can already host your app. Knowing that, you tell me who’s whacked when members are contributing up to €300,000 ($ 419,612 USD) a year for WAC membership.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
- Why Feature Phones Are the New Black for Mobile Apps
- Will Killer Apps Affect Which Handsets Consumers Buy?
- What Happens When Data-Friendly Phones Come to PrePaid?
Image courtesy Flickr user Horia Varlan.
