The more competitive the mobile market gets, the less the idea of tying the various strings of the industry together seems possible.

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), however, continues to march on, with the body using Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to announce it's effectively ready to roll.

The 68 strong group came together to serve up a common standard for app developers, providing studios with an easy route to market that's commercially viable.

One year on from its unveiling at MWC 2010, CEO Peters Suh claims the pieces are starting to fit together.

Happy anniversary"Working together in a unified manner as an industry, we are having a positive impact on the mobile application development ecosystem, providing developers with a simplified method of creating applications and content, and delivering them across operator, handset and operating system," said Suh.

"With the commercial launch of operator storefronts, handsets and applications, all based on WAC, we can say that WAC is now officially open for business."

Securing backing from all corners of the industry is going to be fundamental to WAC's longterm future, so news that Samsung and LG are to ensure all their devices are capable of supporting WAC runtime is key.

Similarly, the announcement that Sony Ericsson has developed a white-label WAC enabled storefront for operators opens up the prospect of WAC apps infiltrating the market almost by stealth.

Carrier wise, WAC can already call on China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Smart, Telefónica, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone as members. 

Wholesale updates

Just what bearing WAC will have on the market as a whole will take some time to deduce, though the body itself is continuing to move forward regardless.

WAC enabled handsets and storefronts announced at Mobile World Congress are based on version 1.0 spec, with 2.0 introducing HTML5 web apps and further rich media support.

WAC 3.0, which is due to roll out in September, will unlock features such as in-app billing and user authentication.