Mobile app developers will get “a simple route to market” that lets them develop a single app for wireless devices’ various incompatible operating systems, according to the Wholesale Applications Community announced in Barcelona yesterday by more than two dozen cell phone carriers and device makers. The “distribution ecosystem” based on “openness and transparency” is backed by carriers weary of being outflanked and bullied by Apple’s iBandwagon, including such open and transparent corporate citizens as Verizon, Sprint, major foreign carriers and even AT&T, Apple’s U.S. iPhone carrier. Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson also joined. Information Week ‘s blogger expects this new League of Nations to get bogged down, fall behind and fall apart.
Demonstrating that even alliance-hungry Apple competitors can’t agree on the same strategy, two more such companies, Nokia and Intel, said they will combine their Linux-based open-source mobile/netbook OS efforts, under the Linux Foundation, Ars Technica reported. The joint effort is MeeGo.