A busy day at Mobile World Congress as expected. The most interesting piece of news to my mind was the creation of the Wholesale Applications Community by 24 telecommunications operators.
Given the fragmentation that exists in the app world right now, with developers forced to make decisions as to which platform(s) they will develop for, anything that looks like it might bring the industry together and achieve a degree of standardisation should be applauded. Whether two dozen telcos represents the optimum mix of companies to achieve this, however, is a moot point.
The analyst community also has its doubts. Mark Newman, Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media, also has his doubts. He says: I believe that the operators behind the inititiative are hoping to capture the mass market for mobile Internet services. Apple and RIM are already dominating the high end of the Smartphone market but this only accounts for about one in five mobile users in Europe or North America. If operators can bring out 100 devices with a good mobile Internet experience they may be able to sell data plans to more low-end users.
However, I do question whether such a large group of mobile operators will be able to achieve the level of cooperation and integration required to make this initiative a success. Some of these operators (for example AT&T and Sprint) are fierce competitors and have always tried to find ways of differentiating themselves in order to win market share.
There is also the issue of whether developers will lend their support to the initiative. They are more interested in developing apps for Apple and Android and have historically distrusted operators because of the unfavourable revenues share deals that have been on the table. A number of the developers that we have spoken to would rather operators keep out of the applications development community entirely.”
And at Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst, Saverio Romeo says: Apple has built a nice and very well functioning castle with a direct bridge to consumers over which no one else seems able to walk comfortably so far. During last year, this castle has successfully dominated the mobile content market. This castle is made of a well designed continuous innovation strategy in terms of devices, content distribution model, revenue model and branding.
The other players, mobile device manufacturers, mobile network operators, consortia of various players can definitely offer competitive devices, development platforms and revenue models and, maybe, treat Apple's domain, but there is one point that are missing: the brand and the marketing power that Apple has. Every time Steve Jobs decides to launch a new product/device/service, the entire world, the common individual in the street included, passionately discusses it for days. Every time, the rest of the industry announces new events, the announcement remains within the industry.
Apple has a strong brand advantage and it is excellent in exploiting it. Consequently, the real challenge is not to walk on the same bridge to reach the castle. The real challenge is to move the attention towards a new mobile content paradigm, one that is not immediately associated with Apple. For example, a paradigm that combines the concept of store with other content distribution models such as the mobile web. All this requires a strong brand action. Probably, the main challenge of consortia like the one announced today is branding. If the rest of industry keeps just talking about applications stores trying to walk on the Apple's bridge, they will always find Steve Jobs at the door of the castle.
There's a piece on the fragementation in the app market in our digital magazine, which you can access here. In the meantime, we're off to do some serious networking. We hope you've enjoyed our coverage of the show today. We'll pick up tomorrow morning. See you then.
David Murphy
Editor 
