China Mobile posted a message (in Chinese) on its developer community, saying an SDK would be jointly released by China Mobile’s Internet business unit, China Telecom’s gaming BU and China Unicom’s broadband BU on May 17 that would make cross-platform capabilities like multi-platform publishing and billing available.
The three participants will also work out a plan to aid mobile app developers who produce “original, quality apps”, according to the post.
The post reads “one billion user pool with the big three telecom operators is opened.” The big three saw , more or less, decline in traditional businesses, especially in text messages and phone calls, while data plan sales is far from being able to compensate for the losses. They became aware and worried about newly emerged mobile Internet services, especially those like WeChat whose free voice messaging features hurt telcos’ revenue-generating services. They even wanted Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, to pay them for using too much of their telecom resources.