Nokia called, brilliant developers answered
Sometimes a text message can save the entire harvest and a child can learn a new language via music. At the recent Nokia World in Stuttgart, Germany, apps that create social impact, and those that entertain and keep people connected were showcased alongside Nokia’s upcoming mobile devices.
On the eve of Nokia World ‘09, Forum Nokia Developer Community (FNDC) revealed the winners of the 2009 Calling All Innovators contest, a developer competition for applications and solutions that enhance the use of Nokia phones in real-world scenarios.
Forum Nokia vice president Purnima Kochikar says that 1,700 submissions were received from 85 countries, up from last year’s 1,000 submissions — a very far cry from 1996 when Forum Nokia started and “there were 20 developers and one device.”
“Nokia today is helping four million developers globally; the last time I looked, over 45 percent are from Asia,” she says.
Nokia awarded over $250,000 to the winners in four categories — Internet Innovation, Flash, Emerging Markets & Mobile Necessities, and Apps on Maps. The top three winners in each category received cash and prizes that include premium placement in Nokia’s Ovi Store.
The grand prize for the Apps on Maps was announced at Nokia World by Nokia executive vice president for services Niklas Savander. It’s a pretty cool app that lets you navigate where there are no roads! Ground Guidance with Ovi Maps, developed by Primordial, uses technology originally invented for the US Army. How? A user picks two points and he’s presented with a walkable route. Primordial created this using a wide range of data sources where no road data exists.
Second-prize winner in the same category is Pocket Life, which lets your friends on Facebook and Twitter know your exact location at any given time. So maybe you should start trimming your friends list or practice telling the truth when your spouse texts you, “WRU?”
Purnima says the top applications being developed today, especially for the young, are those for social networking. “The interesting thing is that there is a true globalization among young people. Social messaging apps are very popular, it’s a common thing that ties them. Also very popular with the young are apps that entertain.”
Where it gets really useful for countries like the Philippines is the Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities category. The grand-prize winner here is the Mobile Credit Card Terminal developed by the Singapore-based 2C2P. This application gives business owners the ability to charge a credit or debit card from Nokia S60 devices. So you can imagine how this can be so useful to small businesses around the country — especially in the provinces and tourist destinations where they don’t have credit-card terminals.
Second prize is Blue Home, developed by Binu Johnson and Irene Rose in India, which lets your Nokia monitor and operate six home appliances. They created this with the elderly and disabled in mind.
Third prize is Mobile JobHunt from LEG to help people in rural China get accurate and timely information about jobs in major cities.
Other winning apps include the Reuters Slideshow, which gives you live feed and news from the wire service; ActiveChinese, which gives English speakers basic Chinese lessons; TechBuzz, which lets you access tech news easily; and Dianping, an application out of China that lets users access info on 275,000 restaurants and 7.5 million resto reviews.
Purnima says that the applications coming out of Asia fall under two categories: entertainment and useful. “One of our top downloaded apps written for the Chinese market filters mobile spam,”she says. “In the US, there is very little mobile spam because you pay for both incoming and outgoing so you can sue the company that’s sending spam — but not in Asia. The developer built this program that puts spam in another folder. It has gotten over 10 million downloads in eight months!”
She adds, “If you want to make a difference in Asia, you have to take it to the broadest number of people and the service that goes broadest both on Internet and normal phones is SMS so that users don’t have to buy a new phone or change their behavior.”
One of Ovi Services’ products is Lifetools, which is providing a unique service to farmers in rural India. Farmers get crop and commodity information via text — like when and what to plant, prices, weather forecasts, etc. Nokia partners with trusted sources, private and government, to provide the information needed.
“This actually impacts people’s lives. And now we’re looking at deploying it in other countries — maybe in Indonesia or the Philippines.”
While games still dominate the apps being developed, Nokia’s Calling All Innovators contest is a venue to help change the world — via a mobile phone — and to think beyond its everyday usefulness. Nokia Philippines communications manager Nikka Abes says the country has an abundance of talented developers and the local office hopes that in the years to come Filipino developers will be creating apps for both the country and the world.
