rise Services Europe is a step in that direction. Based on the agreement Connection will provide M2M and telematics services to Qualcomm. AT&T opened a M2M certification lab in 2009. Sprint Nextel and Telefonica launched M2M-focused business units in 2009. Qualcomm multi-OS (operating system) Plaza Retail will enable publishers and developers to make content available across multiple retailers instantly, regardless of their development platform. Mobile application downloads are expected to reach 5 billion in 2014, more than double 2009's estimated 2.3 billion downloads, according to a new forecast issued by ABI Research (December 2009). The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) launched during GSMA 2010. Twenty-four of the world's largest mobile carriers with a combined subscriber base of over 3 billion across the globe have come together to launch an open international applications platform, marking the largest unified move to date by the operator community into the mobile apps space. It is an attempt by operators to gain back the initiative on application store from the likes of Apple, Nokia and Microsoft. Cloud Computing is another buzz word that is going around these days in the industry. It is a way of computing, via the Internet (cloud), that broadly shares computer resources instead of software or storage on a local PC. The software is delivered as a service over the Internet, eliminating the need to install and run the application on a customer's own computers. Applications exist in the clouds. It doesn't seem to be a new endeavor (according to some), perhaps forcing users to buy into proprietary systems which could run into privacy issues. Operators like AT&T Inc., Verizon Business, NTT America Inc. and Orange Business Services have launched their cloud-computing initiatives as of 2009. Next Generation Mobile Communications Ecosystem Applications Revenue Mobile TV M-Commerce Rest of Data Total Data Years Figure 9.33 Applications revenue Figure 9.33 shows the revenue projections for the four key applicat