Nokia and AT&T are offering $10 million in cash and prizes for developers. Nokia is looking to give its Ovi Store a leg-up through the Calling All innovators contest.
The actual prizes total $4 million; ($150,000 per winning developer, in 17 categories with three winners each). But Nokia and AT&T say they are also putting up $6 million in “marketing promotion”.
Nokia’s Ovi store is competing against iTunes Store and Android Market. Nokia focuses on five key services areas: Games, Maps, Media, Messaging and Music.
The amount of the offer is the biggest yet. Here’s a list of other mobile app developer contests last year.
Other developer contests include:
- The Sprint Developer Contest. Sprint is paying up to $50K and accepting submissions through Nov. 5. They will recognize the top of the class in five categories: entertainment, gaming, productivity, social networking and multimedia. Sprint will score submissions based on creativity, intuitive navigation, functionality and design.
- Intel’s AppUp developer challenge is offering a $60,000 travel experience of a choice of $60,000 cash. Intel’s AppUpSM developer program says they have everything you need to easily develop and sell applications for on Intel’s AppUp center.
- The Bluetooth SIG has an Application Developers’ Contest to promote open source collaboration. The Application Developers’ Contest closes on 10 December, 2010. A total prize package of more than $23,000 will be divided amongst the top finalists.
- Portland’s CivicApps program began this March (Portland Wiki). The goal of the open source design contest was to promote collaboration between citizens and government — to create “apps” that address civic issues and benefit the greater Portland community.
Forrester advices enterprises how to get started in mobile enterprise development. Read/Write Web has a brief guide to tools for mobilizing the work force.
- MobileIron has a Virtual Smartphone Platform 3.0, with an API to use MobileIron’s device management platform to build their own mobile enterprise applications.
- Leapfactor has a new cloud-based mobile enterprise application platform that helps enterprises build single purpose apps that connect with existing enterprise software platforms. It interfaces with SAP or Oracle ERP system.
- Couch One Mobile is the new mobile app development platform from CouchDB. Developers can easily write web applications one time, scale vertically and share data and applications across the computing platforms and mobile devices.
- DragonRad from Seregon is a cross-platform enterprise-focused mobile application development platform launching at BlackBerry DevCon 2010 this month. DragonRad provides a drag and drop environment for app creation
- Rhomobile, a Ruby-based cross-platform enterprise application development platform makes it easier to create mobile apps that work with enterprise applications with custom databases.
Microsoft has announced a number of upcoming entertainment titles for Windows Phone 7 a mobile environment that many observers feel is the company’s last chance to make a splash in the smartphone market.
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is now the fifth largest smartphone operating system in the world.
According to Gartner, Android has overtaken Research in Motion’s BlackBerry to become the top-selling mobile operating system in the United States.
There are now 5 billion wireless users in the world. Wireless communication is now available to every location, age and income level in the world. It is becoming a basic staple like food, clothing and shelter. It’s the biggest stage ever conceived.
