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Few developers are aware of WAC, <strong>and</strong> most of those who are, are unconvinced by it. WACspokespeople say they are waiting until WAC can offer developers a fair crack at monetizationbefore they launch a big outreach campaign to attract them.Progress so farWAC, which was unveiled by operator club the GSMA in February 2010 <strong>and</strong> constituted into aseparate non-for-profit entity in July 2010, launched its first commercial service in February2011, dubbed WAC 2.0 – a developer platform for HTML5 Web apps linked to the storefrontsof eight major operators (China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Telefonica, Telenor, Smart, Verizon <strong>and</strong>Vodafone). Eight other operators were expected to hook up to WAC’s wholesale-applicationsoffering in 2011.But it is unclear how things have progressed since the commercial launch. There is noinformation on the number of developers that have signed up to the widgets platform – thevast majority are likely to have hailed from the JIL program – or on the number of widgetsdeveloped, placed on the storefronts of affiliate operators or downloaded/sold. And there hasbeen no update on how many operators have joined the initial eight as WAC members.Nor is there information on the number of h<strong>and</strong>set models that have been launched this yearsupporting the WAC 2.0 Web runtime. Ffive major h<strong>and</strong>set makers – LG, Huawei, Samsung,Sony Ericsson <strong>and</strong> ZTE – are signed up to WAC, but they have all been quiet about their WACimplementation plans. The h<strong>and</strong>set makers will only bother preinstalling the Web runtime ifoperators placing large h<strong>and</strong>set orders make WAC 2.0 a specification. But, with the exceptionof South Korean operators, there isn’t much evidence that operators are making a special pointof dem<strong>and</strong>ing WAC 2.0 support on new h<strong>and</strong>sets.WAC is planning to give an update to journalists <strong>and</strong> analysts soon, so maybe we’ll find outthe answers to these questions then. But that information was lacking at the WAC Focus Day.And the fact that WAC doesn’t yet feel that it has a good monetization story to tell developersshows that it hasn’t met with much commercial success.What’s coming upWAC is now saying that the first commercial release of WAC 2.0 will happen this monthin South Korea, where the three main operators will start offering WAC widgets to theirsubscribers – free at first <strong>and</strong> with a paid-for offering as of December.On the network-APIs front, WAC is gearing up to launch an in-app payments API linked to thebilling systems of several member operators, as part of its WAC 3.0 release. The API, whichwill be the first to be launched by WAC, is in a beta trial with a small set of developers <strong>and</strong> isexpected to launch commercially by year-end or at February’s Mobile World Congress.Some of the first operators to hook up to the WAC in-app billing API are likely to be DeutscheTelekom, Telefonica, Telekom Austria <strong>and</strong> Telenor, though it won’t be at group level. Forexample, Martin Prosek, manager of VAS-platform development O2 Czech Republic, part ofthe Telefonica group, told delegates that it would probably take the Czech carrier another yearor two to roll out WAC APIs.Sorting out prioritiesThere is much more enthusiasm among Western operators for WAC’s network-API offeringthan for its widgets offering. Speaking off the record with operator representatives at theshow, it became clear that most don’t see much point in persisting with the Web runtime –or, at least, don’t think that the Web runtime should precede everything else in WAC’s rolloutschedule, as it has until now.WAC’s original vision was that the network APIs would primarily be used to enrich the widgetsbeing created on its platform. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. The APIs canbe a separate offering in their own right <strong>and</strong> be offered to the far-more-sizable communityof native-app developers out there. Furthermore, the operators see a much greater chance ofmonetization through the APIs than the widgets.But, of course, reorienting WAC toward serving the native-app-developer community goesagainst one of the fundamental ideas behind the initiative – that of establishing an alternativeapps ecosystem to iOS, Android <strong>and</strong> other native-app platforms. So it’s not an easy mindshift for WAC to make. Yet it is a shift that has already been made by many of the operatorswww.informatm.com © 2011 Informa Telecoms & Media 47