The telcos move is supported by three of the world's largest device makers -- LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson said  GSM Association, the telecoms industry body at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Telefonica and Vodafone are among those who have agreed to the initiative, the GSMA said. Nokia  and Vodafone are already rolling out their own software application stores, opening up proprietary distribution channels that compete with simply browsing the Web.

Operators access more than 3bn customers around the world, the GSMA said, adding the plan would help reduce fragmentation in the industry. In a first step, "The alliance will seek to unite members' developer communities and create a single, harmonised point of entry to make it easy for developers to join."

Apple still rejects Flash
Adobe unveiled Adobe AIR for mobile devices, which provides developers tools to create Flash applications to be delivered through application stores for a variety of devices.

And it announced a trial version of Flash , which for the first time provides a single kit for developers to deliver Flash applications via the Web to any screen, including desktop PCs, notebooks and phones.
 
David Wadhwani, (right) who runs Adobe's Platform business, said Adobe would continue to support both ways of distributing Flash. It has already published tools that offer developers a way to convert Flash applications into ones that work on the iPhone.

"We personally believe very strongly that open distribution will be the model that will prevail, but we're agnostic," Wadhwani said. "Ultimately, the consumer will decide."