Ericsson invites developers to turn their codes into cash

MANILA, Philippines - The hunt is on for the best young global developers and innovators to make their mark in the Ericsson Applications Awards – Code for Cash 2011. Filipino students and software developers are invited to submit their best application ideas in this international competition and transform their code into cash.

Eligible to participate are those with a great developer idea and are studying at university, or work in a company with less than 100 employees. Individual entries are not accepted.Entries should be from a team of two to four people.

Participants need to create an Android-based application (web or native) which uses at least one Ericsson Labs API and is related to the theme “Connected Things.”

“The connected society is already a reality and we will become even more connected in coming years – helping us in our daily lives. Ericsson predicts a world of more than 50 billion connections by 2020. Smart applications will play a huge role in that, so your application idea really could make a difference to society,” says Ericsson Philippines and Pacific Islands president and country manager Rajendra Pangrekar.

The competition is subdivided into two sections – one for students and one for companies.

The winning team in each category will receive a check for EUR 15,000 and Sony Ericsson mobile phones. Sony Ericsson will also be represented on the judging panel as part of its partnership in the competition.

This is the second staging of the competition, following last year’s highly successful inaugural event, which was won by students from the Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland.

The Irishmen’s winning application, CallerProfiler for Android, combined social networking with IP telephony by displaying information from Facebook and other social networking sites on a phone when a call is received.

Tommy Arngren, a senior researcher at Ericsson and one of the organizers of the competition, explains that “at Ericsson we want to give young developers the chance to show their talent. Applications are also key to the future of the telecoms and ICT business, especially with machine-to-machine communication and our vision of a world of more than 50 billion connections by 2020.

“I have no doubt that we will attract a very high quality of entrants and look forward to seeing the applications ideas.”

For full details on the application process and the competition, visit www.ericssonapplicationawards.com.

The competition will close on March 31, 2011, with the results announced in June 2011.