BARCELONA, Spain - AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega used his Mobile World Congress keynote speech here to plead industry leaders for a common set of applications and application programming interfaces. De la Vega’s comments were notable in that AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier of the Apple Inc. iPhone, a device that runs applications incompatible with the rest of AT&T’s cellphone portfolio.

De la Vega never singled out Apple in his comments, nor did he overtly acknowledge the seeming contradiction – calling for a more open application ecosystem while trumpeting the success of Apple’s largely closed approach to the market. De la Vega said his concerns were provoked by AT&T customers who want a simplified market for devices, applications and services.

“We have islands of applications” that don’t interoperate, de la Vega said. “There’s a huge risk to our industry if we don’t get this straightened out.”

Added de la Vega: “Obviously the iPhone has been successful, but I think it would be even more so if there was commonality among applications.”

An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment. The company does not have a presence at Mobile World Congress, seemingly its modus operandi when it comes to trade shows.

De la Vega’s comments reflect a possible disconnect on an open-platform philosophy between AT&T and iPhone maker Apple, a company that has made headway in the wireless market despite a marketing strategy that virtually ignores the manufacturer’s carrier partners. AT&T is on the record as having a great relationship with Apple; indeed the two companies have both benefited from the massive success of the iPhone. AT&T signed up a whopping 1.9 million new iPhoners during the fourth quarter of last year.

“We have to find a way for applications to work across devices, platforms and operating systems,” de la Vega said. “I think we should use standard APIs (application programming interfaces) … that would allow developers to access platforms worldwide.”

De la Vega said handset manufacturers should use the BONDI application standard, proposed by the Open Mobile Terminal Platform trade group. According to the group, BONDI will “drive the standardization of a small set of key interfaces from Web services to mobile devices and also to put in place a well understood and user controlled security policy with which to protect the user.”

De la Vega made his comments at the beginning of a panel discussion with Nokia´s Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, moderated by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg.

Although neither Kallasvuo nor Ballmer discussed BONDI specifically – and Mossberg did not question them about it - Kallasvuo said he agreed with de la Vega’s comments.

“We need a more open mobile ecosystem,” Kallasvuo said, adding “we don’t try to tell our operator partners how to use our services.”

Interestingly, de la Vega lumped Nokia´s Symbian operating system among those that are incompatible with other platforms.

Microsoft’s Ballmer said that de la Vega’s concerns likely would be alleviated by “pervasive computing” and widespread Internet connectivity among applications.

“Most of these (applications) are really front ends to Web sites,” he said, explaining that application developers would be able to more easily develop services under this scenario.

However, Ballmer said operating system developers like Microsoft likely would be unable to share common APIs when introducing new features to their platforms.

“We may not be open enough where you can mix and match everything,” he cautioned.

Although Apple was a no-show here, the company’s iPhone remained a topic of discussion among de la Vega, Ballmer and Kallasvuo. Further, WSJ´s Mossberg seemed eager to discuss the much-hyped gadget by mentioning the product in virtually every comment and question he made while moderating.

Indeed, Mossberg’s apparent iPhone evangelizing sparked an indignant audience member to ask why he seemed so intent on mentioning a product that commands less than 1% of the global cellphone market.

In response, de la Vega said that the rest of the cellphone market is attempting to copy Apple’s iPhone design and strategy, thus meriting discussion of the device.

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