Clock is Ticking for Telcos to Develop a Digital App Strategy

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Telecom operators are now rallying around the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) initiative to develop a coherent strategy for succeeding in the digital applications market – but the window of opportunity is closing quickly, and telcos must make meaningful progress in the next 12 months to prove they belong in the digital app business and that they can compete with over-the-top (OTT) app providers such as Apple and Google, according to the latest report from Heavy Reading Service Provider IT Insider (www.heavyreading.com/servsoftware), a paid research service of Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com).

Telcos Take One Last WAC at Digital App Success analyzes the WAC initiative and its chances for success in providing a platform for telcos to compete in the digital app sector. The report evaluates the opportunities for suppliers of service delivery platforms (SDPs) as enablers of digital app platforms and evaluates the benefits of having platform-as-a-service (PaaS) capabilities that support an ecosystem of third-party developers. Finally, the report profiles 11 leading vendors in the market.

For a list of companies analyzed in this report, http://img.lightreading.com/ssi/pdf/ssi0511_companies.pdf

"According to WAC, 5.2 billion digital applications were downloaded in 2010, generating €1.1 billion in revenue," says Caroline Chappell, research analyst with Heavy Reading Service Provider IT Insider and author of the report. "Recognizing that they need to present a more united front to the developer community, a group of 24 operators came together to create an open, global alliance, with the pledge to offer developers common device and network APIs and the carrot of a 3-billion-strong subscriber base."

WAC represents a credible solution to the challenges posed by telcos' rivals, because it offers developers a common platform for creating apps that run across devices and networks and access to more than 3 billion subscribers globally, Chappell notes. "WAC will help open up the market for SDP players," she says. "It will also expand opportunities for vendors of PaaS technologies to build and/or host national or regional WAC hubs, or WAC-enabled PaaS, on behalf of multiple smaller operators that lack the resources to manage their own developer ecosystems."

Other key findings of Telcos Take One Last WAC at Digital App Success include:

• WAC gained momentum after the recent Mobile World Congress, but it now needs to make real progress to keep up with OTT digital app providers
• HP scored a major coup by winning a deal to build the world's first WAC national hub in South Korea
• WAC 3.0 will include One-API's in-app payment API and an extended identity/ authentication API when it is released in September
• Accenture and Alcatel-Lucent intend to make WAC into the go-to platform for enterprise developers
• NSN's telco PaaS strategy has much to offer WAC operators members, but can the JV play in the alliance while its parent Nokia is out?

Telcos Take One Last WAC at Digital App Success is available as part of an annual single-user subscription (six issues) to Heavy Reading Service Provider IT Insider, priced at $1,595. Individual reports are available for $900 (single-user license).

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About Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com)

Heavy Reading is an independent market research organization offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to carriers, service providers, and vendors. Our remit is to provide the comprehensive competitive analysis needed today for the deployment of profitable networks based on next-generation hardware and software. This information is compiled via exhaustive surveys of both vendors' products and service-provider decision makers.

About Light Reading Communications Network (www.lightreading.com)

Founded in 2000, the Light Reading Communications Network is the world's leading research-led integrated media company serving the global communications market. Lightreading.com is the ultimate source for technological and financial analysis of the communications industry, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. Light Reading's research arms, Heavy Reading and Pyramid Research, provide the most comprehensive communications research, market data, and technology analysis in close to 100 markets around the world. Light Reading produces nearly 20 targeted communications events including TelcoTV, and TelcoTV Asia, Ethernet Expo New York and Ethernet Europe, and The Tower Summit @ CTIA, as well as focused one-day events tailored for cable, mobile, and wireline executives in the US, Europe, India, and China. Light Reading was acquired by UBM plc in August 2005 and operates as a unit of UBM TechWeb.

SOURCE Heavy Reading