The Wholesale Applications Community has received a further boost with the news that Chinese vendor Huawei has provided a WAC-enabled app store for the Philippines’ leading mobile operator, Smart. Crucially, Huawei will also be providing a compatible handset to the carrier.

The WAC initiative gives developers access to a standardised set of operator APIs, meaning applications can be developed to run across the networks of all participating carriers. To date, carrier app store plays have been eclipsed by the success of stores linked to specific smartphone platforms.

Huawei said that: “The practice of carrier members linking to the application value chain only at the beginning and at the terminus is now a thing of the past.”

The Huawei store is compliant with the WAC 1.0 specifications. Version 2.0 was unveiled earlier during MWC, and version 3.0 is expected to be unveiled later this year.