At 2010 Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Spain, two Chinese telecom operators China Unicom and China Mobile, along with 22 other operators, announced on February 15 that they formed an alliance called the Wholesale Applications Community, the Sohu IT News reported on February 17. The alliance, claiming to have a subscriber base of three billion worldwide, will establish an open platform for mobile applications supporting a wide range of mobile devices in a bid to build up an ecosystem to counter with the emergence of closed ecosystems for mobile applications such as Apple's iPhone. The GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Association and three leading mobile phone makers, LG, and Samsung, and Sony Ericsson also support the initiative, according to the same source.

 

Aside from China Unicom and China Mobile, other alliance members include America Movil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, KT, mobilkom austria group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor Group, TeliaSonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind.