Twenty-four telecom operators unite to form Wholesale Applications Community

Big goings on over at Mobile World Congress today. Twenty-four telecom operators, with the support of the GSMA and three major hardware manufacturers, have formally announced they will come together to form the Wholesale Applications Community.

Essentially, the goal of the alliance will be to create a viable, cohesive and open industry platform for mobile app developers. Members of the Community will include AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, TeliaSonera, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone among others, and they’ll be supported in their endeavors by LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The total customers of the group is about 3 billion, giving WAC some considerable — albeit theoretical for the moment — power. The group plans to work on coming up with a standard for working across platforms over the next twelve months.

Via