Remember when AT&T made bundles of cash hawking the iPhone, which only ran applications designed for Apple’s mobile platform? That appears to be a distant memory now that the carrier losts its iPhone exclusivity to Verizon. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson Tuesday told a crowd in Barcelona, Spain all apps should run on all smartphones. Additionally, carriers should have their own app store as an alternative to Apple’s, Android’s and RIM’s.
“You purchase an app for one operating system, and if you want it on another device or platform, you have to buy it again,” the AP reports Stephenson saying in a keynote speech at the Mobile World Conference, a gathering of mobile phone industry players. “That’s not how our customers expect to experience this environment,” he adds.
Instead, apps should be written in HTML 5, a web language enabling applications to run on a wide variety of devices. Also, the AT&T CEO touted the Wholesale Applications Community, an app store seen an the carriers’ answer to the prominent app showcases from Apple and other smartphone makers. The WAC, which launched Monday, would sell applications offered by various carriers and available for a number of smartphone brands. AT&T, along with Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA have signed onto the WAC.
As for phone makers, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Huawei Technologies and ZTE have announced they would support platform agnostic apps. Noticeably absent from the group are the two largest sources of apps: Apple and Google, which both have thriving iPhone and Android communities.
AT&T also released its new commercial touting a $49 8GB iPhone 3Gs. While the phone isn’t new, the offer is seen as the carrier’s latest attempt to counteract Verizon’s $199 iPhone 4. The carrier began offering the iPhone February 10 to the general public.
[AP]
