Among the members of the WAC are handset makers that don’t yet have a handset store to call their own, such as LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Each mixes platforms like those of Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian with their own proprietary platforms, combinations that fail to yield “one-stop shopping” on their handsets.

According to WAC’s website, however, using its platform will allow for the following:

“This [initiative] will allow developers to deploy a single application across multiple devices (through the use of standard technologies) and across multiple operators (without the need to negotiate with each of them). WAC will provide the commercial enablers which will allow the developer to be paid for the applications which are then sold through any associated application store.”

I applaud the carriers for trying to remove development and consumer barriers in order to bring more apps to a wider range of handsets, but while that’s the angle the WAC is putting front and center, the real initiative of this effort is clearly an attempt on the part of its members to grab a revenue slice of the multibillion-dollar app store pie. No details on a revenue split between WAC and developers has been announced, and WAC has said that it will be a non-profit operation and will only try to cover operational costs.

Sound familiar? Indeed, Apple stated on its last quarterly conference call that the iTunes App Store takes a similar approach, and that it operates at just above breakeven (the store must be awfully costly to run if its yearly revenue stream is north of $2.4 billion). The potential similarity between Apple’s store — from which it takes a 30 percent cut of all revenue generated — and what the WAC has proposed to date is striking even though Apple is for-profit entity and WAC is not. Even if WAC considers itself a non-profit, its members are all companies looking to make a profit for themselves and their shareholders or other financial backers.

Although WAC has already shared some plan details on a conference call earlier today, I’ll be attending a follow up call this afternoon and will update accordingly.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

The App Developers Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

The Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), as the group calls itself, is looking to “unite a fragmented marketplace” by creating an open industry platform that will serve as a single path to market for mobile developers, regardless of which platform their apps run on. The WAC plans to create standards to ensure apps run on all platforms, enabling developers to create a single build of an app that could be accessed on a broad swath of handsets. The group boasts some of the planet’s most powerful carriers, including AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DoCoMo and Verizon Wireless, as well as three major OEMs.

While that may sound like a panacea for an industry that admittedly is crippled by a plethora of mobile operating systems, the initiative is nonetheless doomed from the start. Carriers have a well-earned reputation for not playing nice with one another, and it will be impossible to herd all those cats, which operate a wide variety of different networks and platforms. And carriers have never been able to effectively cultivate developer communities or distribute apps, which led to the rise of Apple’s App Store in the first place.

More important, though, is the fact that some platforms are already hopelessly fragmented. Windows for years has struggled with the splintering of Windows Mobile, and Google is already suffering from the emergence of multiple versions of Android. Those fragmentation challenges have sometimes made it increasingly difficult — if not impossible — for developers to address a broad swath of devices within a single OS. Such problems will increase exponentially as the WAC tries to find a way to deliver apps to countless devices running any of a half-dozen (or more) operating systems. And they will only multiply with each new OS — or version of an established OS — that comes to market.

The concept of “write once, run anywhere” is a compelling one, but it’s one that’s never come close to being realized in mobile. And thanks to the proliferation of new smartphone operating systems and an ever-increasing number of superphones on the market, there’s no chance the WAC will be able to change that.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• The App Developer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Platform

Image courtesy Flickr user Horia Varlan.