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London, 27th
July 2010 – The
Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an alliance of telecommunications
companies committed to building an open applications platform, today
announced its formation as a corporate entity, as well as the organisation’s
leadership and board of directors. The company also announced that it will
join forces with the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL), accelerating the commercial
launch of WAC-enabled application stores. The transaction is expected to be completed
in September 2010. Finally, WAC outlined the business models and technology
evolution path that will enable developers, operators and other commercial
organisations to monetise applications and services.
Peters Suh has
been named the CEO of the Wholesale Applications Community. 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.
“Today the
Wholesale Applications Community comes into being as an established company,
and this is a hugely exciting time for everyone involved in the
organisation,” commented Suh. “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.”
The company
announced that Michel Combes, Vodafone Chief Executive Europe has been
elected Chairman of the Wholesale Applications Community, and Jean-Philippe
Vanot, Deputy CEO, France Telecom has been named as Vice Chairman.
In addition to
Combes and Vanot, the WAC board of directors includes:
- John
Donovan, CTO, AT&T
- Li Zhengmao, VP, China Mobile
- Olivier Baujard, CTO Deutsche Telekom
- Alex Sinclair, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, GSMA
- Dr Hyun-Myung PYO, President of Mobile Business Group, KT Corporation
- Dr Kiyohito Nagata, SVP, NTT DOCOMO
- Sung Min Ha, President Mobile Network Operation Business Unit, SK Telecom
- Napoleon Nazareno, President and CEO, Smart Communications
- Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Senior Executive Vice President, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp.
- Marco Patuano, Head of Domestic Market Operations, Telecom Italia
- Vivek Dev, Group Director of Global New Services, Telefónica
- Dr. Hannes Ametsreiter, CEO, Telekom Austria Group
- Morten-Karlsen Sorby, EVP and Head of Corporate Development, Telenor
- Dick Lynch, EVP and CTO, Verizon
Business
Models to Enable Monetisation Across the Ecosystem
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. 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 will 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
Specification and SDK Available in November
WAC will
publish its initial specification and components of its SDK to developers in
November. This specification will be based on W3C standards and create a
strong platform for developing rich mobile web applications. 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. Developers currently
creating JIL applications can continue working with the existing JIL
specification, tools and software libraries and these applications can be
deployed on JIL based devices immediately. With the publication of the WAC
specification, developers will also have a clear path to deploy applications
on a wider range of devices supporting the WAC specification in 2011.
“Today’s
announcement that we are bringing together the innovation and leadership of
WAC and JIL to form a combined entity marks a great step forward in our goal
to provide a truly unified and open applications environment,” said Michel
Combes, Chairman of the Wholesale Applications Community. “I am honoured to
have been elected chairman of WAC and look forward to serving with our
distinguished board and company leadership to turn this vision into reality.”
Editors notes:
Michel Combes,
Vodafone Chief Executive Europe and Chairman of the Wholesale Applications
Community, and Jean-Philippe Vanot, Deputy CEO, France Telecom and Vice
Chairman of WAC will join WAC management on a webinar today at 2pm UTC/ 3pm
BST to discuss their commitment to the success of the WAC initiative. For
dial in and webinar details, please contact Phil Rawcliffe on press@wholesaleappcommunity.com
About the
Wholesale Applications Community
Launched in
February 2010, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) is an open global
alliance formed from leading organisations within the telecoms sector.
Uniting a fragmented applications marketplace, WAC will create an open
industry platform that benefits the entire ecosystem, including applications
developers, handset manufacturers, OS owners, network operators and end
users.
The Wholesale
Applications Community will:
· Accelerate and expand the market for applications – Simplify
application development by giving developers the opportunity to write
applications that can be deployed across multiple platforms and multiple
operators, and address a potential global market of more than 3 billion
users.
· Create more compelling applications – Enable developers to utilise
both device and network capabilities to create the next generation of
applications.
· Provide greater choice for users – Enable portability of
applications across devices, operating systems and network operators.
For a list of
members and more information, please go to www.wholesaleappcommunity.com
Press Contact:
Phil Rawcliffe
07889 320159 press@wholesaleappcommunity.com
Claire Cranton
07885 839427 press@wholesaleappcommunity.com
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