24 of the biggest operators have teamed up to launch a mobile application store to rival Apple’s store.

This initiative is destined to fail: it will be designed by committees and run by committees. And the best way to kill a project is organising meetings.

Each mobile operator has its own targets to meet, its own investors and ultimately its own interest. When is the last time you saw competitors coming together and creating a really good solution? … Never?!

Some of them have already developed their own stores or are half-way there. All these “stores” have been created and pushed in a response to the Apple. Back in August 2009, at the monthly “iPhone & Smartphone Developers & Publishers meeting” in London, Sanjeet Matharu, the Principal Manager for Developer Marketing from Vodafone, presented the case for making Voda-widget versions of iPhone apps. The initiative was good but extremely late – they were still relying on web technologies. We’ve asked him why is Vodafone suddenly interested in allowing developers to write apps for their platform and if it is a result of the iPhone success. He evaded the question – he’s a good manager.

We see this initiative as a desperate effort from telecom companies to claw back on the mobile market and minimise the revenue share of hardware producers (like Apple). They are currently paying hefty revenue shares to Apple.

We’d like to thank High Macleod for this brilliant cartoon.