Winners of Nokia’s Calling All Innovators “Bil3arabi” 2009 contest, a developer competition for Arabic-language mobile applications, have been announced.
1st place prize winner
The grand prize winner of $100,000 went to “Here I am” from Enpronomics in Egypt. It is a user-friendly, geo-presence application with personal safety features that enables users to call for help in emergencies, share their location with family, close friends and know the location of their beloved.
2nd place prize winner
In second place, and winner of $25,000 in cash, is Elmathbakh created by private developers Senai Refai and her husband Kamel Seghaier from Tunisia. Elmathbakh is an application that helps people keep track of their daily calorie intake. Its various features have been designed especially for Arabic diets.
This competition focused on the region and Arabic content certainly energized developers here to take part. Ovi Store MEA respresentative said they saw varied levels of entries that included really great apps, some that still need work and tests, as well as documented ideas that need implementation. There is always a great potential that this region holds in application and content development.
The Other Top 10 Applications
These applications have received the Judge’s Choice Award and will get a one-year membership in Forum Nokia Launchpad, which enables members to receive access to exclusive resources and support to accelerate mobile application development and elevate developer’s business visibility in the mobile world. These applications are:
- OI2ot by Inficron
- Arabian HawkGood by News 4 me
- AlMoosiqar by Quirkat
- Yoolki
- Sarhan by Good News 4 me
- Messagei
- Wassal by Inficron
- Moodi by MT2
- Konooz
- Frenzo
The Benefits
In addition to the cash prize, the grand prize winner will receive a “spotlight” placement featuring the winning application for 4 weeks on the top page of Nokia’s Ovi Store; and paid travel to demo the winning application at a Nokia specified event. The winning application will also be reviewed by Nokia for possible preload on future Nokia devices. Second place will also receive a “spotlight” placement featuring the winning application for 3 weeks on a relevant category page on Nokia’s Ovi Store.