Two dozen of the world's largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile and Vodafone, are teaming up to create an "open international applications platform,".
This is 'the industry's' response to Apple's success with its own iPhone App Store.
The announcement was made this morning at Mobile World Congress.
In addition to the 24 carriers, the GSMA and three handset manufacturers—LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson —are also supporting the initiative.
Combined, the group reaches 3 billion subscribers worldwide, making it easily the largest app-store initiative.
This 'stop Apple' initiative is an extraordinary cross industry alliance and shows just how scared the industry is by Apple's success.
Will it work?
Alliances of this scope are exceedingly complicated on a human and technological basis.
Its also significant that there are massive players missing - Google is missing, no. 1 handset manufacturer Nokia is missing and Telefonica is missing.....
So let's wait and see.
In the meanwhile Apple and Google will continue to shake-up the industry and ultimately consumers will benefit so that's to the good.
No comments:
Post a Comment