The Wholesale Applications Community, set up a year ago to develop a universal platform for mobile applications, announced the commercial launch of the organisation at the Mobile World Congress. At a press conference in Barcelona, WAC CEO Peters Suh will be joined by a number of CEOs from the organisation’s 68 member companies as he unveils WAC-powered storefronts, demonstrates WAC-compliant handsets and web applications, and provides a view of future developments in WAC. Mobile operators including China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Smart, Telefonica, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone are announcing at MWC that they are connected to the WAC platform. The initiative also has the support of handset makers Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE. Both Samsung and LG have pledged to ensure that all their devices capable of supporting the WAC runtime will do so. Ericsson also launched a white-label WAC-enabled storefront to enable operators to launch their own WAC storefronts. Developed with Opera software, the Ericsson eStore will be used by Telenor to launch an app store in Serbia.
The handsets and storefronts launched are based on the initial WAC 1.0 specification, published in September 2010. WAC also announced the availability of the WAC 2.0 specification, which supports HTML5 web applications with rich multi-media capability. WAC 3.0 will be available in September 2011, allowing developers to unlock backend network assets including in-app billing and user authentication. WAC will showcase a WAC 3.0 application developed in conjunction with a leading US TV network that features video and music content including ringtones, social networking, messaging and ticketing capabilities. The application is specifically designed to take advantage of select network APIs, such as user authentication and in-application billing. WAC also announced that it will enable applications from alternative applications development environments to make similar use of these network assets.
