Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators Global Developer Contest announced by Nokia

Forum Nokia, the largest online global mobile developer community recently announced a global contest, Calling All Innovators that should enable developers to create mobile applications for the betterment of society.

The challenge is being endorsed by the global technology pioneer Dean Kamen, best known for inventing the Segway PT and for founding FIRST, an organization which inspires high school students worldwide to study science and technology. The contest is Forum Nokia’s challenge to budding developers by empowering them to use their creativity to the fullest. Developers can now think big with an opportunity to impact the quality of human life using mobile applications.

Along with a trip to Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona, and distribution of their application for free through a variety of Nokia channels, first place winners in each category will receive USD 25,000 while second place and third place winners of each category will receive USD 10,000 and USD 5,000 respectively.

“For over 15 years, I’ve been focused on sparking the curiosity of up-and-coming inventors, especially kids, by showing them that science, technology and problem solving is rewarding, and important. Now that mobile devices are becoming as powerful as personal computers and more ubiquitous, challenging mobile developers and young inventors to develop the right applications can take the device simply known as a cellular phone and transform it into a catalyst to help society in many different ways”, mentioned Kamen.

Tom Libretto, Vice President, Forum Nokia, added further “With Nokia’s belief in social responsibility, we support Dean Kamen’s relentless pursuit to help the world through the use of technology. Calling All Innovators is not just about making mobile applications that could help society; it’s about developing mobile applications that will help society.”

Calling All Innovators will open up new avenues for mobile application developers to create applications that will intensify the usability of mobile devices in real world scenes. The challenge is categorized as following:

Eco-Challenge: An application that should efficiently work towards minimizing mobility’s global environmental impact with mobile solutions in offering.

Emerging Markets: Giving new opportunities to developers, this category lays emphasis on applications and services impacting the routine lives of millions with solutions for education, health data access, infotainment, rural agriculture, or any other application that improves lives in emerging markets.

Technology Showcase: With this category, developers are given a chance to create and exhibit compelling, experience driven applications, using any technology that runs on Series 40 or S60 devices, such as Flash Lite, Java, Python, or open source.

Entries for the contest have already opened on September 16, 2008 and are due by December 15, 2008. Notification and selection of the finalists should come through in January 2009.