South Korean wireless major SK Telecom Co. which spearheaded a combined app marketplace with local rivals has teamed up with its peers in Singapore and Thailand to launch a gaming community platform in Southeast Asia.

SK Telecom, Singtel of Singapore, and AIS of Thailand have recently launched a project to set up an online game community platform dubbed “Storms” via their joint venture Digital International Games, according to industry sources on Tuesday.

Storms will be bred as a mobile app store to pose a formidable challenge to Google Play.

The three telcos target to launch the new app marketplace next year and work with major smartphone makers including Samsung Electronics Co. to have their app store mounted in handsets.

SK Telecom already has played the leader at home, launching an integrated mobile app marketplace ONE Store with Korea’s other major wireless carriers KT and LG Uplus, and internet giant Naver in 2016. ONE Store has made a big stride against Google in Korea, claiming the second largest 18.4 percent share as of August this year, according to mobile market tracker IGA Works. Google with Play Store accounted for 71.0 percent in Korea and Apple with App Store with 10.6 percent.

The advance of ONE Store is notable considering that similar services in Japan and the U.K. have failed to win over consumers from Google and Apple, said Lee Jae-hwan, ONE Store CEO.

Industry insiders attribute ONE Store’s solid performance to its strategy to offer lower commission charges, which is 20 percent versus Google’s 30 percent fee rate.

The Korean app market operator plans to cut commission charges further by the end of next year, giving it an appeal against Google which would be charging developers a 30 percent fee on all apps and in-app customers purchase in its Play Store market from next year. Until now, it has applied a 30 percent rate on game apps only.

SK Telecom anticipates its new app store to be launched in Southeast Asia would take a similar low commission rate policy to lure users.

Singtel runs businesses in 21 countries across the world beyond Singapore and has nearly 700 million subscribers. AIS as the largest mobile carrier in Thailand boasts 41 million subscribers. The Southeast Asian mobile game market is forecast to reach 470 million by 2023.

By Lim Young-shin and Cho Jeehyun

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