Q&A: Telenor backs WAC

WAC (Wholesale Applications Community) first became a must-know acronym in the telecom industry back in February 2010, when a group of operators and device manufacturers joined forces to create another way to get applications to the market. In an app world dominated by power players such as Apple’s App Store and Android Market, WAC promises to bring easy and convenient, Web-based content and services to the masses, with or without a smartphone.

With the announcement on July 27 that WAC is now a corporate entity, many questions have been raised as to the operator’s role in WAC, how WAC will develop and when apps will be available to customers. Telenor has made WAC a part of its service enablement strategy, and has established the “Go WAC” project team internally to deal with some of these issues. Rune Slinning, the Go WAC project leader, and Hilde Lovett, a project member, answer a few questions on Telenor’s role in WAC and why it’s important to have an app alternative.

Q: Why is it important for Telenor to join WAC?
Rune: An important part of the “Service Enablement Strategy” of Telenor is to support application ecosystems that provide relevant mobile applications for our customers. We believe that a successful ecosystem will provide developers with attractive business models and a large market of potential customers, and will make attractive applications available to end-users. Today we regard Apple’s App Store and Android Market as the two most important application markets for advanced phones. However, WAC’s goal is to develop a complementary ecosystem that offers standardized Web applications that can run on both advanced smartphones as well as lower-end feature phones.

Q: What is Telenor’s role in WAC?
Rune: There are two levels of membership in WAC: a Board of Directors membership or a regular membership. Telenor chose to serve on WAC’s Board of Directors in order to gain full insight into the organization and to have priority when launching the application stores, as Board of Director companies will be the first operators to start selling WAC applications. Morten Karlsen Sørby, Telenor’s Executive Vice President and Head of Corporate Development will represent Telenor on the Board.

Q: The media has depicted WAC as the operators’ retaliation against Apple’s App Store and Android Market. Is this the case?
Rune: That’s not the way I see it. WAC is an industry initiative that creates an ecosystem for developers. The telecom industry has come together to create an ecosystem so that developers can create applications, and then potentially distribute and sell their applications to a large customer base.
Hilde: Since the applications in WAC are Web-based, we can reach a much broader audience of developers, as there are more people who know Web technology (html and JavaScript) than who can create native mobile applications. So WAC is not only reaching more customers, but more developers as well.

Q: So then, how does WAC fit in to the overall app ecosystem?
Hilde: It’s really an alternative. WAC targets slightly different developers and provides applications to different types of handsets. These handsets aren’t necessarily the high-end smartphones or the low-end budget phones. WAC provides apps for the phones that are somewhere in between.

Q: Who are the developers creating applications for WAC?
Rune: Many of the smaller companies, the long tail companies so to speak, do not have the means to travel the world and sell their apps to operators. With WAC, they now have a one-stop-shop where they can simply register and make their applications available to WAC’s entire ecosystem… and get paid for it. For these types of companies, it will be much quicker and easier to get their apps to the market through WAC.

Q: How does a developer submit an application to WAC?
Hilde: WAC is designed to be self-service. You simply submit your app, enter the key search terms for that app, outline any restrictions and set your price. It’s an easy business model, quite similar to what Apple does with their App Store. With each sale of an app, WAC shares a cut with the developer.

Rune: But for WAC to work, you can’t accept every application that comes in. WAC will test the app’s performance and ensure that it complies with different regional policies and WAC’s own requirements.

Q: Will WAC take a cut of the profits as well?
Rune: WAC is a non-profit organization. Upon the sale of an app, the operator will take a share, WAC will take a share only to cover their expenses and the rest will go to the developer. WAC serves as the single point of commercial agreement with the developers.

Q: How will WAC applications be made available to customers?
Rune: Each operator can establish storefronts or portals where they are able to promote and sell the applications to customers. A Telenor storefront application can also be available on the handset, where applications will be easy to purchase and download directly from the phone.

Q: How much control will WAC have over Telenor’s storefront?
Rune: WAC will create reference implementations for the storefronts, so that we can follow some guidelines for building our own. Each Telenor business unit can create its own storefront to promote, sell and distribute the applications to their customers.

Q: What will Telenor’s app store be like?
Rune: Our view is that we will offer a Telenor applications storefront where the customer can easily find and buy the best mobile applications and content to meet his or her needs. For example, if you have an Android phone and are searching for apps, the store could offer you relevant applications from both Android Market and WAC.

Q: When can we expect Telenor’s app store to be up and running?
Hilde: The Go WAC project team is now in the process of making recommendations to all of Telenor’s business units around the world, so we are actively working with them to bring apps to their customers.

Rune: WAC has announced that they will demonstrate an early version in February, at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Devices that can run WAC apps will be commercially available in mid-2011.

Q: Wait a minute…a customer needs to buy a new phone to run WAC apps?
Rune: No, you don’t need to buy a new phone. Users can download the Widget runtime to their phones and then they can install WAC apps. However, our experience tells us that it is easiest when you buy a handset that is already capable of this, where you simply click on an icon to access the shop and start downloading applications. Pre-installed is preferred, but we will of course cater to the handsets that do not have it pre-installed.

Q: When will WAC apps move beyond the mobile phone and be ready for TVs, game consoles and other Web-enabled devices?
Hilde: There’s currently a European research project called WAX going on that looks at how WAC can reach other devices. TVs, game consoles and many other devices are already Web-enabled…so this is not way in the future – it is simply the next step. WAC is involved with the W3C (Web standardization body) to ensure that it stays aligned with the future development of the Web, meaning it is designed to be future-proof. It’s only a matter of time.

-End of interview-