{{unreferenced, date=March 2010
The Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) is a joint venture between
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...
,
Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the divi ...
,
China Mobile
China Mobile is the trade name of both China Mobile Limited () and its ultimate controlling shareholder, China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd. (, formerly known as China Mobile Communications Corporation, "CMCC"), a Chinese state-ownedSt ...
and
SoftBank Mobile
is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the V ...
. It is backed up by handset makers
LG Electronics
LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest ''chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered ...
,
Research In Motion
BlackBerry Limited is a Canadian software company specializing in cybersecurity. Founded in 1984, it was originally known as Research In Motion (RIM). As RIM, it developed the BlackBerry brand of interactive pagers, smartphones, and tablets ...
,
Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, a ...
and
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products, headquartered in Sakai-ku, Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. Since 2016 it has been majority owned by the Taiwan-based Foxconn Group. Sharp employs more tha ...
.
The companies use the JIL as a platform to develop mobile services. JIL's first project is to develop a mobile widget ecosystem that will allow developers to benefits from access to the combined customer base of the four JIL mobile operators.
For developers there is special web site with an SDK and guides for how to develop JIL widgets.
The Wholesale Applications Community was formed by a group of 24 mobile network operators and announced at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona with the remit to tackle device fragmentation through the introduction of ‘open standard’ web technologies.
Over the following year, more and more companies expressed a commitment to the common cause and WAC now boasts over 60 members in its ranks, including handset manufacturers, software development companies and mobile network operators from all over the world.
In September 2010, just six months after the initial announcement, the first WAC 1.0 mobile web run time specification was released, signalling the organisation’s intent to support developers with an open web-based platform that could run applications across multiple devices and operating systems.
With the support of its 40+ members, WAC appointed former Vodafone executive Peters Suh as CEO, with Michel Combes and Jean Philippe Vanot taking on the roles of Chairman and Deputy Chair. The news that the GSMA’s OneAPI would be the standard adopted by WAC’s network operator members for the exposure of network APIs was followed by a further nine new members joining the organisation, including new OEMs, swelling the membership to over 50 companies.
By Mobile World Congress 2011, WAC formally confirmed its status as a ‘not for profit’ organisation and announced that its membership had now grown to more than 60 full members. At a packed press conference in Barcelona, WAC CEO Peters Suh was joined on stage by a number of executives from the organisation’s member companies, where he unveiled a number of WAC powered storefronts and demonstrated feature rich web-applications running on a range of WAC compliant handsets from members that include Huawei, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and ZTE.
The Wholesale Applications Community continues to support developers wishing to reduce development costs and at the same time drive innovation and revenues. In Q4 2011, as part of its commitment to help developers and distributors maximise long term revenues, WAC has launched a closed ‘live’ BETA with selected content and carrier partners to demonstrate the capabilities of its in-application billing network API across a range of platforms.