Wholesale Apps Community to be based in London

Network operators get ready to battle Apple and Google in mobile apps market

Apple currently dominates the mobile app market

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona earlier this year, will be be based in London, according to The Guardian.

WAC is an attempt by the world's network operators to compete with search giant Google and iPhone vendor Apple in the mobile applications market.

WAC members include big carriers such as AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, O2, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, as well as hardware vendors LG and Samsung.

The Guardian also reports that WAC will merge with another industry body called the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP), which was set up to make mobile data services more user-friendly as well as improve mobile device security.

The two bodies share many of the same members.

With analyst firm Gartner recently predicting mobile application revenue will hit $29.5bn (£19.4bn) in 2013, the importance of the market to network operators is clear.

Gartner's figures also show that Apple was responsible for 99.4 per cent of mobile applications sales in 2009.

When WAC was announced, some industry experts argued that working alone it might not be able to deliver effective competition to Apple in the mobile applications market.

Nick Jones, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, told Computing at the time: “I’m very sceptical about this group. I wouldn’t rely on the operators to roll out a vendor-agnostic platform as it is not in their interests to do so.”