AT&T’s mobile developer program gets acquisition boost

AT&T is preparing to get into application development for mobile phones, and in a way that might make it easier to brand its own applications and store. AT&T has announced the acquisition of Plusmo, a developer company that created a cross-platform framework to create widgets that would work on iPhone, Android, and a variety of other phone operating systems.

It makes little sense for AT&T to push an app store for iPhone when Apple has its own and when AT&T’s exclusivity with Apple may be short-lived. The new plan is to create an AT&T applet/widget set that would work on a variety of platforms and to induce developers to support that model to increase AT&T’s differentiation and flexibility at the same time.

It’s a smart move, particularly if AT&T can then link the Plusmo framework back to AT&T-hosted service features and development kits—the kind of stuff BT already provides and that the GSMA OneAPI addresses. We’re hearing they are very interested in that.