The GSMA today announced winners of the Mobile App Challenges (http://www.mobileappchallenge.com), a series of skills-based competitions aimed at the app developer community. The 2011 challenges included the Brand App Challenge, the Band App Audition and the mWomen Base of Pyramid App Challenge. Each individual challenge is designed to inspire developers to create original mobile apps with very different end-users in mind. Winners were chosen for their creativity and ability to address the criteria set forth by the Challenge partners.

“There were some fantastic apps submitted across all three Mobile App Challenges and these winners truly represent the most creative and innovative developer minds,” said Michael O’Hara, chief market officer, GSMA. “We are delighted to be able to work with such forward-thinking partners and sponsors who value and realise the power of mobile.”

Brand App Challenge – An exciting competition in which mobile application developers create “brand apps” for Coca-Cola under its Coca-Cola, Coke Zero and Diet Coke brands. Developers were tasked with submitting a video of their idea or app based on guidance and objectives set out in a brief by Coca-Cola. Entries were allowed across a wide range of mobile operating systems including Android, Apple iOS, BlackBerry OS 6, HP webOS, Symbian and Windows Phone 7.

The winners for the Brand App Challenge are:

• Coca-Cola Winner: Share Happiness submitted by Mike VanBeneden. This app helps people to connect, through social media, with others who share the same musical interests and likes. By sharing playlists and social connections being created through the use music a universal language is created and as a result, happiness is spread from one user to another.
• Diet Coke Winner: RoboCoke by Pawel Kwiatkowski and Intelmind. An app that aims to make Diet Coke become a source of positive inspiration for simple but unusual things that people can do every day. It inspires users to discover small challenges and pleasures around them and gives users personalised challenges based on user profile. Users receive personalised challenges to help them “be extraordinary” in their everyday life”.
• Coke Zero Winner: Zero Heroes/Happiness meets Appiness submitted by James Kane and Two Bulls. An app that leverages Coca-Cola’s global market presence to inspire consumers to participate in fun and rewarding games and challenges. This is accomplished by transforming Coke vending machines into game portals using augmented reality.

Band App Audition – A competition where developers create mobile apps for world-leading music artists seeking innovative ways to interact directly with their fans. Participating artists included Enrique Iglesias, Faithless, Metric and Muse, and the Band App Audition was conducted iIn partnership with the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and the Music Managers Forum (MMF).

The winners for the Muse, Faithless and Enrique Iglesias Band App Auditions are:

• Muse Mobile Backstage by Steam Republic. The app creates a private place for fans to engage with Muse and co-create material and share that experience within their own exclusive “tribe”. Muse Mobile Backstage serves as a central hub for first-hand updates and behind the scenes coverage, directly from the band’s personal mobile phones.
• Faithless by Mediagates. The app includes content, online ticketing, two entertaining games and voting on remixes of selected Faithless songs created by adding guitar cords, piano, blowing on microphone for wind instruments and shaking the mobile for beat and scratch sounds.
• Enrique App by Darius Khan. The app has a strong and vivid feature list including standard features such as news feeds, forums, discography, media players, image galleries, tour dates, biography and social currency/merchandise. It also has augmented reality viewers, a built-in m-commerce solution with the ability to perform micro transactions, content protection and the Infiniwave – a real-time social interaction bringing people together through music.The two runners- up for the Metric Band App Audition are:
  • Metric Phone App by Martin Mädler. A feature-rich application which allows the playback of audio samples. The fan wall can collect Twitter and Facebook messages of Metric as well as comments/replies of fans. Further features include browsing through photos fetched
  • Metric App by Darius Khan. The app has a strong and vivid feature list including standard features such as news feeds, forums, discography, media players, image galleries, tour dates, biography and social currency/merchandise. It also has augmented reality viewers, a built-in m-commerce solution with the ability to perform micro transactions, content protection and the Infiniwave – a real-time social interaction bringing people together through music.

  mWomen Base of the Pyramid Apps Challenge – This competition encouraged developers to create customised applications targeting women in developing countries. The sponsor for the mWomen Challenge was Vodafone.

  The winners of the mWomen Base of the Pyramid Apps Challenge are:

  • Feature phone winner: NextDrop. In many areas of the developing world, water is only available through pipes for a few hours at a time. NextDrop will partner with water utilities and consumer goods corporations to provide a service that alerts consumers living within the same geographical area when water supply becomes available.
  • Smart Phone Winner: TiendaTek by Frogtek.The majority of corner shops in Latin America are run by women; however, often their efficiency is limited. TiendaTek, using an Android smartphone and a barcode reader, enables businesses to track transactions, identify areas for improvement, receive education, connect to suppliers and sell virtual goods, such as mobile pre-paid airtime and micro-insurance.

  -ENDS-

  About the GSMA

  he GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries and territories, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations. The GSMA is focused on innovating, incubating and creating new opportunities for its membership, all with the end goal of driving the growth of the mobile communications industry. For more information, please visit Mobile World Live, the new online portal for the mobile communications industry, at www.mobileworldlive.com or the GSMA corporate website at www.gsmworld.com.

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