When one thinks of mobile apps, it’s tough to think of anything other than the ones for the iPhone. There’s an app for that rings through our heads as TV commercials and websites reveal to us that the iPhone is the platform of choice when businesses want to develop mobile apps. Apple now has a little over 175,000 apps in its store and over 3 billion have been downloaded to date. Attempts to topple Apple have probably left the company thinking, “You and what army?”

An army of 24 mobile companies, that’s who. AT&T, Verizon, Spring, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and so many more big names are banning together to form Voltron Wholesale Applications Community or WAC. While it’s not the most exciting name, the WAC is looking to bring more excitement to the mobile application space, but how well can it compete with Apple? It’s not like this hasn’t been tried before, and most of those efforts have failed, although to be fair, none were quite this large in scope.

Right now, Apple’s ecosystem works and it works well. Even though app store approval process has been a headache to most developers, it hasn’t stopped Apple’s success. Is that the recipe for an app store that works? Could the WAC be spoiling the broth with too many cooks?

[via CNN]