Forum Nokia has announced the winners in its Calling All Innovators worldwide contest for mobile apps and solutions "to help improve the quality of life on the planet".

Nokia

The contest categories and list of winners, who were honored at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, are:

ECO-Challenge category, for environmentally-conscious apps and solutions

  • Grand Prize: GreenDrive (Israel) - an app promoting vehicular fuel efficiency by sensing current and impending road conditions that influence fuel consumption and providing real-time driving directions for the shortest route in the quickest time legally allowable
  • 1st Place: TigerMap (China) - an eco-friendly city guide app for choosing public transportation, combining latest mass transit info with recommendations of the best restaurants, entertainment, hotels and shopping in more than 150 Chinese cities
  • 2nd Place: Ticketek Mobile Ticketing (Argentina) - a Series 40 and S60 Java electronic-ticketing app that reduces paper consumption by allowing consumers to use a barcode stored on their phone to gain admission to events

Emerging Markets category, for improving lives in developing nations

  • Grand Prize: Nano Ganesh (India) - an app that allows Indian farmers to remotely contact modem-equipped electric irrigation pumps, to check power supply and pump operation without traveling long distances .
  • 1st Place: mPedigree (Ghana) - an app that uses text messaging to check whether anti-malaria drugs and other medications are counterfeit or not
  • 2nd Place: DigitallCS (Digital Internal Control System) (Mexico) - an app for monitoring farm practices and output to check whether growers are adhering to Fair Trade Certified and Certified Organic standards

Technology Showcase category, those Flash Lite, Java, Python, open source or other technologies supported by S40 or S60 devices

  • Grand Prize: X Dancery (China) - an S60 5th edition app analyzes any MP3 file to automatically generate a unique tempo-based game for each selected track
  • 1st Place: kReader Mobile (U.S.) - a multilingual text-to-speech app with cross-language translation capabilities uses the camera phone to digitize any book, letter, receipt or other printed document and translate the captured text into audio that is "read" back to the user
  • 2nd Place: Neuscreen (Thailand) - an application that utilizes the drawing, touch-screen and camera functionalities of a Nokia N95 device connected to a normal television set to track the motion of a pen light and enable "virtual" drawing, as well as projection and manipulation directly on the TV screen of images stored on the mobile device.

Each of the grand prize winners received $25,000. First placers won $10,000 while second placers got $5,000.

The next phase of the contest will cover three categories: Internet Innovation, Flash, and Emerging Markets. Prizes include cash, the opportunity to demo at Nokia World in September, and Spotlight placement of winning apps in Nokia's Ovi Store.