By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
After chalking up huge success over the past years through sales of such gadgets as the iPod, iPhone and iPad, high-tech giant Apple might now have reason to sweat as a global alliance is forming to counter the firm's dominance in the application download market.
Launched midway through 2008, the firm's App Store allows its customers users to browse and download applications.
KT, Korea's No. 1 telecom operator, said Sunday at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona that the company will join 23 other global wireless carriers to build a mega-sized application store, dubbed the Wholesale App Community (WAC).
Korea's top mobile carrier, SK Telecom, will also participate in the initiative along with such international giants as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo, China Unicom and China Mobile.
Three mobile phone manufacturers will take part in the plan - Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Sony Ericsson.
"The 24 operators will work on standards to enable WAC, which will cover some 3 billion people, or about two-thirds of all global wireless phone users," a KT spokesman said.
"WAC is likely to offer services starting next year after establishing standards. Down the road, service areas will extended from mobile phones to other wireless devices," he said.
The mobile industry has shifted its stance to focus on software as well as hardware. Many market consultants predict that the application market will hit the $6 billion milestone this year.
U.S.-based Apple has ruled the emerging market on the back of its App Store, which has recorded upside of 3 billion downloads to iPhones over the past one-and-a-half years.
"The biggest hindrance of the download market was that developers were required to create applications for a specific gadget, which were usually not interoperable with other devices," an anonymous KT spokesman said.
"However, WAC will change the rules of the game in the not-so-distant future. For example, developers will be able to make games, which can be played on a variety of cell phones," he said.
Experts say that it will be interesting to see the responses from Apple as well as Google, the world's largest search engine that is now in the wireless telephony scene with its Android operating system.
Google has already set up its own Android application store as many manufacturers have opted for the operating system.