Huawei unveiled its WAC app store solution Wednesday, and is banking on its SDP customer base and B2B capabilities to stand out from the growing pack.
Huawei’s WAC Store is essentially a WAC (Wholesale Application Community) 1.0-compliant version of its white-label Digital Shopping Mall service. This is a hosted service that provides cellcos with a ready-made, aggregated customizable app storefront for content such as music, e-reading, and games, as well as a billing platform.
Philippines cellco Smart Communications is Huawei’s first WAC Store customer. Last week Smart unveiled the Android-powered NetPhone as its first WAC-compliant handset.
The Huawei announcement comes amid a flurry of other solutions enabling WAC storefronts, including Ericsson and IBM.
Where Huawei aims to differentiate itself is its service delivery platform (SDP) expertise and customer base, and its focus on enabling both B2C and B2B business models, says Dr. Che Haiping, CTO and vice president of Huawei Software.
“We are leveraging our SDP footprint as a way to enhance progress of WAC,” Dr Che told telecomasia.net, adding that Smart is also an SDP customer.
“That’s one point of differentiation. Another is our two-sided business model transformation strategy for operators, which enables them to generate revenues not only from end users downstream, but also from upstream partners such as advertisers, government and utilities.”
Che said Huawei is working with other operators in Asia, the Middle East and Africa to implement its WAC Store, and that it is already working to implement support for WAC 2.0, which was released on Monday.
Huawei has been a member of WAC since October 2010.
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