Nokia set to hold mobile apps contest in Nairobi

Nokia East Africa will host a two-day mobile application development competition in Nairobi that will see the winner take home Sh1 million.

The competition seeks to increase number of applications targeting African market.

The competition dubbed “Nokia Hack” is scheduled for June 23 and will challenge participants to develop the best Qwerty applications commonly referred as Qt - development for Nokia smartphones such as those based on Nokia Belle.

“Through Nokia Hack, we want to recognise and reward local app developers by giving them a platform to create their best apps with Qt. We will also work closely with them to refine the apps for publishing on Nokia Store and have already seen great traction in East Africa and globally for downloads of these smartphone apps,” said Peter Karimi, business development manager EDX, Nokia East Africa.

About 100 developers will meet for 48 hours to compete against each other in app development.

They will be treated to a number of fun leisure activities to keep the energy high, as well as chill out zones for some downtime.

This competition comes after the recently concluded Series 40 Hackathon, dubbed “Ignite” which challenged participants to develop mobile apps for the broad base of Series 40 users, a segment that is showing tremendous growth in downloads from Nokia Store.

“The first Hackathon was very successful and saw over 80 developers participate. We hope to get well over 100 registrations for this one, and encourage developers to take advantage of this great opportunity to showcase their talent,” said Mr Karimi

The overall winner will receive Sh1 million, while the second and third runners up will receive Sh300,000 and Sh100,000 respectively.
In addition, there will be special mention prizes where 10 app developers will receive Sh10,000 each.

Judges for the competition will be trainers selected from Emobilis Training School.

Nokia is keen on mobile applications tailored to education, health and e-commerce sectors.

It is facing stiff competition in the handset market with firms such as Samsung, Apple and ZTE gaining market share and is looking at emerging nations to spur sales.

Kenya’s software developers were thrust to global prominence after local firms – Virtual City and Taka Taka Solutions Ltd – won global awards.

Virtual City won the $1million Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge award for innovators who would create mobile products that can improve lives of people in developing nations.

The firm has shed more than 30,000 jobs in three years and moved production to Asia from Europe to cut costs.

The Finnish giant last year downgraded the Kenya office from a regional hub to a sales and marketing office under South Africa.

A report released by Gartner in November indicates that Nokia’s global marketshare dropped to 22.8 in August from 30.3 per cent same period last year, with its overall pieces sold over the period dropping to 97,869.6 from 111,473 in 2010.