ERICSSON announced on Tuesday The Ericsson Application Awards in which students and small- and medium-sized enterprises from anywhere in the world are invited to submit Android and iOS apps. The competition will give participants and their teams the opportunity to gain a foothold in the app industry, while also earning recognition and making contacts within the telecom industry. There will be two categories for this contest – one for students, and one for small- and medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 100 employees. “Mobile subscriptions in the Middle East grew nine percent year-on year - or eight million - to 284 million in the first quarter of this year, mainly fueled by strong growth in smartphones. This signals the vast number of opportunities in mobile application development. Considering this, and combined with the talent pool we have in the Middle East, we expect to receive a good number of unique and innovative applications from the region in this year's Application Awards competition, all with the ambition to leverage on the rapid growth of smartphone demand in this part of the world,” said Anders Lindblad, President of Ericsson Middle East. The theme of the 2014 competition is Apps for Working Life, in support of Ericsson's vision of a Networked Society in which – through a combination of mobility, broadband, the cloud, applications and services – anything and everything is connected. How can apps help us all in our daily working life both now and in the future? How do we contribute to making the next generation of working life a context where people can better innovate, collaborate and balance life outside work? In the Networked Society, Ericsson is the leading advocate of Technology for Good and we encourage innovation to help meet sustainability challenges. The Technology for Good award of EAA 2014 will recognize achievement in this area. The winner of the student category in 2013 was Portugal's GreenSpark, which offered a solution based on energy efficiency with a truly global reach. The UK's TboxApps was the winner in the company category. Their solution was based on usage patterns in order to get access to instant messages and quickly get help. In all, 192 teams took part in the 2013 competition (compared with 143 in 2012) from 52 countries. — SG
