SUNNYVALE, CA, United States – March Apps Madness kicked off just a few weeks ago and it has been a fun competition. Each day, we’ve seen big apps go up against independent applications and the voting has been fun to watch unfold.

We’ve seen 32 applications divided into four categories go head to head in a competition that drew an amazing amount of votes, lots of interest from developers, and of course support from all those involved. In all, there were almost 15,000 votes registered for all apps over the course of the competition.

Thanks to all those who made App Madness a reality, from the developers that tweeted and blogged about their apps in the various rounds and most importantly to the the fans that voted day in and day out.

Without further ado, let’s unveil the big winner!

The winner of the 2012 March Apps Madness is Nextgen Reader!

Nextgen Reader enables you to read your news from Google Reader on Nokia Lumia phones. This full featured news reading application supports Live Tiles, allows you to share articles on Twitter, Facebook or read them later on services such as InstaPaper and Read It Later.

A fully featured news reader, Nextgen Reader allows for custom themes, has YouTube support and even supports Offline mode – something that comes in handy quite often.

We’re proud that an independent application won this years competition and Conversations readers should keep an eye out for a full interview with the author of Nextgen Reader in the coming weeks!

Here’s the final version of the bracket, so you can see how it all played out.