BARCELONA—Operators are celebrating the first anniversary of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), an endeavor they launched here last year at Mobile World Congress (MWC) to address fragmentation in the applications space.

During a press conference yesterday, WAC CEO Peters Suh was joined by some operator executives in announcing that WAC is officially open for business, with the commercial launch of operator storefronts, handsets and applications.

China Mobile, MTS, Orange, Smart, Telefonica, Telenor, Verizon and Vodafone all announced that they are connected to the WAC platform. WAC also said that Ericsson has developed and is launching a white-label WAC-enabled storefront that can be customized to enable operators to quickly and cost-effectively launch their own WAC storefronts.

The handsets and storefronts are based on the initial WAC 1.0 specification, published last September, but WAC has since released WAC 2.0, with support for HTML5, and in September, it will make WAC 3.0 available. That version will enable developers to unlock backend network assets such as in-app billing and user authentication.

WAC is enabling portability of applications across devices, operating systems and network operators, so developers can write once and the applications will work across platforms, and end-users can port apps across devices, something operators say their customers are demanding.

WAC said thousands of Web applications are currently available in the WAC-enabled storefronts, including many popular applications and content that end users are downloading today.

For WAC to really provide the most benefit for developers, it would seem to need to represent as many carriers and device makers as possible. It now has 68 member companies and boasts support device makers Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE.

WAC says that of the handset manufacturers, both Samsung and LG will be driving uptake of WAC by ensuring that all devices produced by the two companies that are capable of supporting the WAC runtime will do so.