Trying to get in on the avalanche of applications for sale through Apple, BlackBerry, Samsung, Google Android, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson and many other app stores, 24 of the world’s leading mobile operators are throwing their hat into the ring with the announcement of the Wholesale application community. The mobile operators are trying to regain control of the value chain above their network environments with the vision of a single store for apps through member carriers.
Unfortunately for the mobile operators, consumers and business people just don’t think of their carrier as a preferred channel for their apps. They really do prefer to buy them from the vendors of their smartphones. And unfortunately for the mobile operators, there is one thing less desirable to work with when developing an application – and that’s a consortium of mobile operators.
My view: waste of time. I predict that carriers will get nowhere fast. They will not be able to get the momentum in software developers who won’t be able to attract the users to make this a viable service delivery platform.
