Livewire: The Communications, Media and Entertainment Blog

If we look deeper into this WAC announcement, the most important part of it is that this initiative will promote mobile web based applications rather than native applications developed for an OS platform. Web-based applications (following some sort of web standard like HTML for example) can ease the pain for the operators since they can develop an application that could run on any OS as long as it has a good browser. The time and money required to develop the App for each OS is avoided.

However, given the vastness of the subscriber base we are talking about, even mobile web based applications may be an issue. Not every device today has a Full-HTML capable browser that is powerful enough to render web-based applications. The non-uniformity of the browser experience on the mobile devices will again be a cause of concern for the developers since they cannot provide the same kind of experience for their apps across all of the devices that can be targeted through a common ecosystem. So the fragmentation in terms of user experience will continue to remain.

Also, developers trying to provide a native experience by integrating with the native OS applications like a Dialer, Address Book, GPS, and Calendar can face challenges. So unless these integration methods are normalized, the developers cannot be sure of providing the same level of integration and experience across different devices and OS platforms.

To keep up with the competition and to provide differentiated User Experiences, we see efforts from various OEMs and OS-makers to push their device and OS platform harder. In fact, the competition to grab a market share of the Smart phone growth has heated up than never before. If a new device platform has the potential to capture the interest of the consumers, Operators try to grab that as an opportunity to sign up new consumers by signing exclusivity deals with OEMs.

Even in terms of Standards and Platforms, we are seeing fragmentation happen. Groups tend to customize any standard or specification a little so that it is optimized for their own design and customer experience. Suddenly the standard is broken and there are more than one version of the same. We have seen this happen in the past several times. And there has always been a struggle with each new standard or consortium that has tried to solve the problem of fragmentation of any kind!

Consequently from a developer point of view, the App Stores and the target OS platforms become vastly different across different regions and operators across the world. Not to mention the variations  in policies (for content, pricing, and certification) across different App Stores.

Given the state of the industry, it seems we are moving towards even further fragmentation!!

And to this effect, this year's MWC itself showed that the App Store mania was in high gear and we saw an array of announcements from Operators and OEMs around newer Platforms and App Stores. To name some of them:

• WinPhone 7 (by Microsoft who called it a new chapter in Smartphones),
• Samsung Bada,
• MeeGo (Nokia and Intel combined their respective Linux-based OS platforms Maemo and Moblin)  
• Ericsson's eStore, a White-labeled App Store for Operators with 30,000 apps
• And lastly, the "super" app store platform - Wholesale App Community 
• Not to mention the recent merger of Pocketgear and Handango to create one of the largest independently owned App Stores

Whether the WAC initiative becomes successful is something that is to be seen! But despite all of the challenges, such an initiative, if implemented correctly, has an enormous potential and will be beneficial to all stakeholders including developers and consumers.

Historically we have seen that common standards have evolved over a period of time and not within a year or two. Likewise, I believe that even an initiative as big as WAC will evolve and mature over a period of the next few years.

And until then, I believe, the App Store Fragmentation will continue to stay and grow! And who the winner is will ofcourse be determined by the Consumers! What are your thoughts?