Nokia launches innovation contest

Nokia has launched a competition meant to encourage local content development in the country.

Nokia Head of Messaging for East and Southern Africa Ms Agatha Gikunda who launched the competition with a prize of Sh10 million said there was need to encourage innovation in the country.

“Nokia’s Calling All Innovators Africa competition has been specifically launched to enable developers to create locally relevant, best-of-breed mobile applications.” she said.

She said the competition was open to new subscribers and the experienced coders, who could use the competition to grow their businesses.

Ms Gikunda said the competition challenges mobile and web application developers to submit entries for content in any category within Ovi Store (Applications and Widgets, Video, Personalization, Games, Audio, Flash & Active idle widgets) with a focus on Internet Innovation, Flash, Mobile Games and Social location.

“This competition, which has been extended to the rest of Africa, is open to both individual and company entries. We are inviting Kenyan developers to submit entries that are of relevance to the African user,” Ms Gikunda said.

Ms Gikunda said Nokia had also opened up Ovi Maps for developers as part of the Calling All Innovators competition.  

“The designers of the best ideas for applications will be entered into a second stage of the contest where finalists will gain access to the beta environment and the tools to develop their ideas in practice. This category of the competition really allows developers to be creative and to use their personal experience from using navigation tools to develop applications that will really add value to the user,” she explained.  

Nokia has extended the closing date for the competition to the November 15, 2009, and the winner will be announced on December 10, 2009.  

Nokia will also accept direct submissions from those developers whose applications cannot currently be uploaded to Ovi Store.