The Wall Street Journal announces an unprecedented union: 24 of the biggest mobile phone operators will work together to create a platform which will offer smart applications for mobile gadgets users.

Amongst these 24 companies are the giants of telecom market: Vodafone (number 1 world operator), AT&T (number 1 USA operator), Deutsche Telekom (mail European telecom operator) , Orange (France Telecom’s mobile brand) and Telefonica (second European telecom operator group).

This joint venture could become a serious threat for Apple as the 24 operators bring together 3 billion users and are backed by important mobile telephone vendors (LG, Sony Ericsson, Samsung).

At the end of 2009 Apple was offering through  App Store about 100.000 applications that could be downloaded with almost 3 billion downloads for iPhone and iPad, outmatching any other service of this kind. It is worth mentioning that from the moment when iPhone was launched in the mid 2007 and up until late of 2009, Apple took over 13,7 percent of the mobile phone market taking into account that up until then they had no product launched in this area.

One thing is certain: consumers are still requesting developments in the area of “smart” phones. A study conducted by Gartner announces that the users will spend about 6,3 billion dollars for phone applications and games in comparison to 4,2 billions spent in 2009. Moreover it is estimated that in 2013 the mobile phone market  will increase to 29 billion dollars.