SAN FRANCISCO, USA – Build a killer app, walk away with a $250,000 cash prize. 17 runners up will walk away with $150,000 each in cash. It’s as simple as that. Today Nokia and AT&T announce the North America Calling All Innovators contest which calls for developers to create apps for North American consumers. Unprecedented in its size and scale, the contest is sure to see a wave of great new apps and games washing onto North American shores between now and when it closes at the end of January. Read on after the jump to find out more.
Open to developers across the globe, the competition is designed specifically to create apps for North American users. Every app submitted will be available to download exclusively through Ovi Store by Nokia and for the first time in Calling All Innovators, consumers will vote with their feet as winning apps will be selected partly through the number of downloads they receive.

Finalists for each of the 17 categories will be put forward to a judging panel from AT&T and Nokia who will then select three winners in each category. Category prize winners will walk away with $150,000 each whilst grand prize winners will pick up an additional $100,000. There will also be $6million worth of marketing promotion in place for winning developers.

Judges will be looking for new apps which take advantage of the new Symbian operating system, the Nokia N8 hardware and the APIs available. There will be six different gaming categories alongside 11 different application categories, including business, entertainment, video and imaging, social networks and location.

Purnima Kochikar, VP Forum Nokia said:

“Developers have the tools, the support from AT&T and the marketing power of Nokia to get visibility for their apps. Additionally, developers can make their Qt-based app available in Ovi Store to Nokia customers globally reaching tens of millions of customers.”

Whilst this is great news for developers, it’s even better news for us as consumers and Nokia users. We’ve already seen a big leap in the standard of apps and additional functionality available through Ovi Store and this trend looks set to continue over the coming months. We’re really excited to see what kind of apps will be available as a result of this latest Calling All Innovators contest.

Last week we saw the global Calling All Innovators winners announced at Nokia World and that, together with the Hackathon at the Nokia Developer summit saw some fresh innovation, and killer apps, coming through. And now there’s even more to come.