“The ‘Wholesale Applications Community’ can certainly claim wide support – three handset makers, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, along with dozens of carriers and operators including China Telecom, AT&T, Orange and Vodafone. It is expecting more members in coming weeks,” Oates reports. “The group, which claims three billion customers, wants to create a single market place for mobile applications regardless of what platform they run on.”
Oates reports, “Whether WAC can really offer an alternative [to Apple’s App Store]. Operators, and handset makers, have hardly covered themselves in glory with their previous individual efforts to create app warehouses and communities of users. If they haven’t been trying to undermine one another, they’ve usually embarrassed themselves with pathetic attempts to get down with the kids they imagine are the main market for mobile phone apps.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The rude awakening that we predicted back in November 2006 continues to play out.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” – Ed Colligan, Former Palm CEO, laughing off Apple’s ‘iPhone’ threat, November 20, 2006
…” I would definitely dive into making apps for their soon-to-be releases app store if I was a smart developer. Being one of the first groups, not much competition, and I could even use some of the best selling Apple apps store ideas to cash in on this.”… (edited slightly for proper English)
The problem with this statement is that it assumes that the sales of apps on this store would reasonably match the volumes seen in Apple’s store. None of the numbers today would support that theory, and looking at the deep fragmentation of the rest of the market, there is no chance in hell it would ever happen.
To port an iPhone application (or to replicate a successful one) to a myriad of other different platforms would be equivalent to self-torture, and the end result would be practically meaningless.
There is no way this would attract any meaningful number of developers. No way.
Since they can’t sell iPhone apps and Apple doesn’t sell apps that run on other phones, just how do they plan to challenge a “dominance of mobile apps”… that doesn’t even exist?
Also, I noticed Verizon was conspicuously absent from the list of participants. I say conspicuously because, as a Verizon customer, I doubt this sort of arrangement would fly with their “nickle-and-dime-the-customer-to-death” business model.
It would mean losing revenue to a third party and/or raising prices to customers.
I don’t buy ring tones, music, or games from Verizon because 1) I don’t like being charged for something I should be able to do myself at no cost (and could if I had the exact same phone from another cell service provider), and 2) I can’t transfer any of them from an old phone to a new model. Only contact info can be transferred.
Also, I don’t use my phone’s camera because it costs 50¢ to get photos off the phone… by emailing them to myself.
Yeah, I’m a Verizon customer… and I hate them. The only consolation is that I don’t fritter away time by using my phone for anything other than calls.
Isn’t multiple companies colluding to gain position in a market illegal?
@ Ads
Good fictional book, but be careful believing in fairy tales.
Wholesale Applications?
What, I’ve got to buy like 6 dozen apps at a time?
There is already a “store” that meets the criteria they are shooting for. It’s called the web. The only way this will work is with web apps. Oh boy.
And of course the phones all support the same OS so all apps will work the same on all phones. What are these guys smoking and why won’t they share it?
“Is there such a thing as a “small swath”. Just curious”
@Beowolf
I believe it’s called a landing strip.
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They’ll need countless meetings just to decide on the paper for the stationery of their joint organization…
So a Japanese company, a Korean company, and a Swedish company are going to work together in different offices in different countries, speaking different languages, and using different operating systems, are build this tower of Babel?
“Play for Sure” anyone?
*crickets*
thought so..
@twilightmoon – I guess the “large swath” consists of a significant fraction of 0.4%. That’s a fearsome number.
This is like a bunch of shitty transformers getting together to form a Giant shitty transformer. They will still loose.
This smells of desperation among dinosaurs.
This could be even more fun to watch than Ballmer’s ZunePhone
Asshats, like all the libs that are announcing they are quitters now. Clean em out I say. Lets start over. Next guy to get the boot in the ass is Hussein
Lets see, the Wholesale Applications Community (WhACo for short) is going to open a store to sell (or rent) applications for devices made by a half-dozen companies, in a hundred different models and sold by a myriad of carriers, all trying for a cut of the action.
They want developers to enter this fractionated, incompatible world instead of one where there are at least 60 million essentially compatible devices selling through one outlet. Yeah, they’ll just jump at that opportunity.
Or consumers to sift through all the apps that won’t work on their phones to find ones that perform a useful function on their phone for a small price. Not seeing that as the shopping experience of a lifetime.
Their problem is that no one but Apple can offer a consistent mobile device platform, where most apps will work on most devices. There are obviously some differences in Apple’s hardware, such as lack of GPS or video capability, but Apple has generally designed a platform and software distribution system that allows customers to buy apps without confusion about which apps work with which device. And developers can create and test ONE app, instead of having to create different versions for different devices.
This conglomeration of the mobile industry’s players in not going to solve their problem. It will have the opposite effect. It will only serve to show how hopelessly fragmented the rest of the industry is, compared to the solution that Apple offers to consumers and app developers.
They seem to forget to mention their #1 problem – none of them makes the iPhone or the iPad or have the Apple software ecosystem.
They’d be better off testing their assumption by offering a new Linux Desktop on a subsidized net book connected with 3G. If their assumptions were correct, it should replace and take over most Windows markets, right?
“banding together to try to challenge Apple”
Wow! Who would have imagined encountering such a phrase ten years ago? Like linking “beleaguered” with Dell and Microsoft. Yet those too have come to pass!
Hey, while the´re at it, why not create a web page – or better still- a web PORTAL. Then everyone could just go there and get all the apps they need for all devices. At the same time there could be another page with all the information you might ever need.
One wonders if they got the idea from Gates or Balmer? True visionaries!
We’ve seen these group approaches before and they are hard to pull off. Just look at the group music stores we saw. They cater to the lowest common denominator to take advantage of scale, and unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is crap.
Wholesale Applications Community, that’s WAC!
Seriously, if these companies believe that they can form this WAC consortium and then attempt to freeze Apple and other potential competitors out of mobile apps, then the antitrust organizations will be all over them.
Three billion customers, across six different continents, speaking a slew of different tongues, with cultures unique to their respective geographic areas. Yeah, a single marketplace catering to all these folks makes a lot of sense.
It doesn’t matter if the mobile industry bands together to form an app store since people aren’t flocking to the iPhone because the competition lacks a unified app marketplace, they’re flocking to the iPhone because they don’t like shitty, fragmented platforms. The Wholesale Applications Community does nothing to make Sony Ericsson/LG/Samsung/etc. handsets any less shitty and fragmented. It therefore totally fails to solve(or even address) the problems that make said handsets unpopular. WAC is whack.
Only a retard would argue for its success when it’s a dud right from the start.
So basically, you want some assurance you’re not the only retard? Is that what you’re saying?
cough”Neck”cough