Apigee acquires WAC technology

Market Wire reports.

Apigee will build on WAC's technology to deliver a unified network API service for telecommunications operators as well as a cross-device mobile app development platform.

In a related announcement, the GSMA announced a partnership with Apigee to provide Apigee's services to the nearly 800 mobile operators who are members of GSMA. The GSMA is a global association that unites and represents the interests of the world's leading mobile operators.

This deal includes a specific API for carrier billing for in-app purchases, and it plays nicely with carriers all around the globe, Venture Beat writes.

WAC's technology offering is its mobile payment API, which lets users pay for digital and/or virtual goods using carrier billing. It's been used on mobile networks from AT&T to Deutsche Telekom to Telef'onica. The service has run on Apigee since its launch earlier this year, so it makes sense for Apigee to buy the technology outright.

WAC was started at Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, in 2010, and was backed by 60 operators and others involved in the mobile industry, including Samsung, Intel, Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm, Fujitisu, NEC, HP, HTC, LG, RIM and more, Tech Crunch notes.

Notably absent? Apple and Google, of course - the makers of the app store successes that WAC aimed to topple with its Web runtime technology.

WAC's Web platform used standard technologies like HTML, JavaScript and CSS and built upon the work of JIL (the Joint Innovation Lab, another joint venture between operators). In short, it was a bet on Web standards besting native applications - which, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. But the HTML-based WAC applications were limited - they couldn't access the phone's hardware, like the accelerometer or gyroscope, for example. And they didn't appeal to developers, already too busy building apps for iPhone and Android, and maybe BlackBerry or Windows Phone. Not surprisingly, no WAC apps have yet to launch.