BARCELONA, Spain – Forum Nokia’s Calling all Innovators developer competition came to a conclusion yesterday with the winning developers and their applications announced at Mobile World Congress. Almost 1,000 developers from 57 countries entered the competition, before nine finalists were selected to take part in the final. $40,000 in cash awards were up for grabs in each of the three categories – ECO-challenge, Emerging Markets and Technology Showcase.Each of the three categories had a grand prize winner, who walked away with $25,000. This was followed up by a $10,000 winning first place and a $5,000 second place.
Rob Taylor, Director of Forum Nokia said:
“The high caliber of these nine winners in the first iteration of Calling All Innovators underscores the remarkable, ongoing creativity and innovation that currently defines the mobile developer community around the globe”
It doesn’t stop here though. The next phase of the competition will see Forum Nokia challenging developers to eek out mobile device enhancements in real world scenarios. The aim is to uncover and give birth to truly innovative applications and services. The three key categories are focussed around Internet Innovation, Flash and Emerging Markets. Internet Innovation will use technologies such as Nokia Web Runtime, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX and other standards-based Internet technology. Flash will challenge developers and designers to make the most of Flash Lite on Nokia S60 devices whilst Emerging Markets will focus on making the most of Series 40 and S60 to meet the needs of those in developing countries.
Meanwhile, here is the final list of the, er, finalists. Well done one and all. We’ve looked at all the apps here and I know I personally have been blown away by the level of innovation across the board. The prizes are very well deserved.
ECO-Challenge: Applications or solutions to minimize mobility’s global environmental impact and enable consumers to make sustainable lifestyle choices that reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint.
Grand Prize: GreenDrive (Israel) – An application that promotes vehicular fuel efficiency by sensing current and impending road conditions that influence fuel consumption and providing real-time driving directions for the shortest route in the quickest time legally allowable.
1st Place: TigerMap (China) – An eco-friendly city guide application that makes choosing public transportation easier, combining up-to-the-minute mass transit information with recommendations of the best restaurants, entertainment, hotels and shopping in more than 150 cities throughout China.
2nd Place: Ticketek Mobile Ticketing (Argentina) – A Series 40 and S60 Java electronic-ticketing application that reduces paper consumption by allowing consumers to use a barcode stored on their phone to gain admission to events.
Runner-up: Green Phone (India) – An S60 application maximizing battery life through improved regulation of device backlight, WLAN, Bluetooth and charger power consumption.
Emerging Markets: New mobile solutions to improve the daily lives of millions in developing nations, focused on areas such as education, health data access, infotainment and agriculture.
Grand Prize: Nano Ganesh (India) – This application allows farmers in India to establish remote contact with distant, modem-equipped electric irrigation pumps , to check on power supply and pump operation without the need to travel long distances .
1st Place: mPedigree (Ghana) – This application allows users to text-message at no cost a quality-authentication code found on the packaging of anti-Malarial and other medications to a provisioned mobile shortcode in order to guard against counterfeit drugs believed to be responsible for an alarming number of deaths, especially in the developing world.
2nd Place: DigitallCS (Digital Internal Control System) (Mexico) – With this application, agricultural co-ops can inspect the growing practices of their members and upload the data to a website for reporting and analysis in order to verify the growers’ adherence to standards that include Fair Trade Certified and Certified Organic.
Technology Showcase: Applications using Flash Lite, Java, Python, open source or other technologies supported by Series 40 or S60 devices that create a compelling end-user experience for individuals or communities:
Grand Prize: X Dancery (China) – This application, fully optimized for the S60 5th Edition’s touchscreen UI and motion sensor technology, and with advanced 3D-graphics rendering capabilities, analyzes any MP3 file to automatically generate a unique tempo-based game for each selected musical track.
1st Place: kReader Mobile (U.S.) – This multi-language text-to-speech application with cross-language translation capabilities uses the camera phone to digitize any book, letter, receipt or other printed document and translate the captured text into audio that is “read” back to the user.
2nd Place: Neuscreen (Thailand) – This application utilizes the drawing, touch-screen and camera functionalities of a Nokia N95 device connected to a normal television set to track the motion of a pen light and enable “virtual” drawing, as well as projection and manipulation directly on the TV screen of images stored on the mobile device.
Runner-up: PhotoMap (Germany) – This application digitizes and stores a photograph of any fixed public map taken with a camera phone for easy access, browsing and geo-referencing on the mobile device.