On Monday, an alliance of 24 cellular service carriers and device makers announced the Wholesale Applications Community. The community is an effort to enable developers to write applications that run on as many phones as possible. While laudable, reducing fragmentation is a very ambitious goal, and I don't think that it will be easy.

The alliance has decided to use Web applications that are written to the JIL and BONDI specifications to achieve compatibility. That's great, but it doesn't cover the last mile; developers will still need to target many devices. Devices have different sized displays, some have track balls, and others use touch screen navigation - you get the picture. Then there is the issue of accessing native resources and applications such as address books and dialers.

Nokia has already gone down this path. It is a microcosm of the industry, having an incredibly diverse line up of products sold throughout the world. It really had not other option than Web applications. Either does the Wholesale Community (it would be worsening fragmentation if it tried to establish a standard package).

Nokia uses porting kits for its own OS with APIs for customizing applications for its phones. The Wholesale Applications Community will need to built similiar kits for developers. The user experience will be very limited otherwise. It will be interesting to see how appealing the final product is to developers. The last mile should be included.