The Wholesale Application Community (WAC) kicked off commercial operations Monday with eight operators, 12,000 apps and a software upgrade.

 

China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Smart Communications, Telefonica, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone are now connected to the WAC platform, covering an addressable base of 1.6 billion mobile users, said WAC chief executive Peter Suh.

 

And another eight operators are due to connect to the platform this year, Suh added.

 

Vodafone Europe chief Michel Combes said the WAC launch applied to all of the markets in which Vodafone operates.

 

“Just as mobile number portability has been beneficial to customers and driven competition between operators, we need to have ecosystem portability,” Combes told journalists at the Mobile World Congress. “Why should I have to think about whether the device in my hands can make or receive a video call, or supports Angry Birds?”

 

South Korean incumbent KT announced support for the WAC platform on its storefront at the press conference. “In Korea, we are working together to ensure that operators and OEMs are working together on this,” Hyun-Myung Pyo, President of KT’s Mobile Business Group noted.

 

Korea-based handset makers LG Electronics and Samsung – also WAC members – said all new devices from either company that are capable of supporting WAC will do so.

 

Huawei, Sony Ericsson and ZTE are the only other handset makers onboard with WAC, which has 68 members in total.