The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), which was created at last year’s Mobile World Congress, has announced the commercial launch of the organisation. There are now WAC-powered app stores as well as WAC-compliant handsets and web applications.

A number of major mobile operators and handset manufacturers are already working with the WAC platform. In addition, Ericsson has developed a ‘white label’ WAC-enabled storefront that enables operators to launch their own WAC storefronts.

Peters Suh, CEO of WAC, said “In the one year since WAC was initially formed at Mobile World Congress 2010, we have achieved a great deal, delivering against our committed timelines and objectives every step of the way. 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. 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.”

WAC also announced the availability of the WAC 2.0 specification, which supports HTML5 web applications, and said WAC 3.0 - promising in-app billing and user authentication - will be available in September.

The Wholesale Applications Community is an open global alliance formed from leading organisations within the telecoms sector. It aims to create an open industry platform that benefits the entire ecosystem, including applications developers, handset manufacturers, OS owners, network operators and end users.