Power to the API

There’s only one way to beat a bully: stand up to them, and even better, bring a few of your friends along to back you up and provide support.

That’s essentially the strategy behind several new approaches that aim to get wireless operators back in the mobile application ballgame — a contest they’ve largely lost to Apple’s App Store, not to mention up and coming copy-cat stores run not by carriers but other players like operating system creators (Google Android) and device-makers (Nokia and Research In Motion).

The challenge, though, is that while single-operator walled garden approaches may have worked in the past when there weren’t more open app competitors with a broad global reach, they won’t work today. Marketing and distributing apps to just one customer base or one geographic region won’t cut it. Customers don’t like it and developers, quite rightfully, feel even more strongly about it because it limits their ability to monetize apps.

Making it even more challenging, competing application platform providers such as Apple have found early success delivering application toolkits and interfaces that are simpler to use and essentially duplicate or route-around capabilities that mobile operators thought only they could provide — things such as location (via GPS), presence (via social media check-in), address book access (again via social media friend networks) and more.

Several efforts are under way to consolidate the power of mobile operators — and operator application programming interfaces (APIs) — to win back the mobile app game.

In February, 24 of the world’s largest global operators — including the big four in the U.S. — joined together to form the Wholesale Applications Community, with the goal of creating a common application development platform for their networks. The end result of the effort would be a developer being able to write code for a single app and have it work over every member’s network and devices, serving billions of subscribers.

“The big thing for the developers is that they’re going to have a lot more access to a lot more customers,” said Alex Sinclair, chief technology and strategy officer for the GSM Association. If the initiative resembles the Joint Innovation Lab established by China Mobile, Softbank Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone, it’s no coincidence, Sinclair said. The partnership takes the initial JIL premise, a common development ecosystem, as well as JIL’s initial focus, widgets, and expands it to a much larger group of global carriers, effectively creating a de facto standard for small-bore application development in mobile. “We didn’t want a Jack versus JIL situation,” Sinclair quipped.

While the WAC is clearly the centerpiece mobile operator app effort, momentum in other areas is gathering as well. The LiMO Foundation, which supports the popular Linux operating system in mobile environments, offered its backing to the WAC. Like the carrier wholesale effort, the LiMo Foundation is also focused on white-labeling software and letting users personalize it to their needs while reducing industry fragmentation, said Morgan Gillis, executive director and member of the board for the LiMo Foundation. Operators including NTT DoCoMo, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone have released devices running the LiMo platform and apps.

Not to be outdone, the largest independent app store, PocketGear, recently acquired fellow app store Handango, with a goal of creating a compelling alternative for carrier app stores. Fellow app store enabler Tarsin, meanwhile, has introduced its platform for deploying apps across the networks of the four major U.S. carriers. Finally, industry vendor Alcatel-Lucent launched the second stage of its Open API Service, which like WAC has a goal of helping operators aggregate and package up their most important network APIs.

“The idea is to let developers write once and access multiple service providers — a lot of SMS aggregators do the same kind of thing today,” said Laura Merling, vice president of ALU's developer strategy. “What we can do is help service providers bundle APIs together, then as a developer rather than pay for one API or another you can access multiple APIs across service providers, API providers and other developers. We want to encourage them not to go over the top but make [telco APIs] more palatable by giving them things they want access to.”

In addition to aggregating APIs, Alcatel-Lucent’s model also changes how developers pay to access APIs. Rather than charge upfront fees or set monthly per-API-call minimums, Merling’s team has put forth a model where developers can access APIs for free and then share revenue on the back-end to cover the costs once the app starts making money.

The challenge for all of these API efforts is the exact thing that has made Apple’s app store so successful: putting together an appealing value proposition for developers — essentially, “Let us help you make money.”

“There is the issue of whether developers will lend their support to the initiative,” said Mark Newman, chief research officer for Informa Telecoms and Media. “They are more interested in developing apps for Apple and Android and have historically distrusted operators because of the unfavorable revenues share deals that have been on the table. A number of the developers that we have spoken to would rather operators keep out of the applications development community entirely."

For mobile operators, this is one game they can’t afford to lose. By joining forces and combining their user bases, APIs and networks in more interesting and, to developers, more palatable ways, they hope that their strength-in-numbers play can change the way the game is played.

Strength in Numbers
In a series of recent moves, mobile operators and independent app stores are combining to combat the Apple App Store.

Wholesale Applications Community
Twenty-four global operators, including the big four in the U.S., are creating a common app platform for their networks.

PocketGear Plus Handango
Leading independent app stores are merging and offering to work more closely with operators.

Alcatel-Lucent Open API Service
The vendor is helping operators aggregate and package APIs to help developers build better apps.