With millions of devices from Symbian OS in the marketplace today, a global mobile application development contest ‘Open C Challenge’ was organized for the encouragement of open source and freeware developers in porting innovative software applications.

This event was sponsored by Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer support program, with Orange and Symbian Developer Network. Entrants were invited to submit open source applications for mobile and desktop environments which could be ported to S60 on Symbian OS or Native Symbian C++ applications.

After a span of four months in the selection process where a panel of software and mobile industry experts judged, Open C Challenge declares its winners. The criteria adopted for judgment were quality and usability of the applications, creativity and difficulty of porting process and the innovative ideas of the developer.

Entry barriers and learning curve for developers using application logic and core components in S60 platform were lowered with Nokia’s Open C Plug-In. Open C uses eight standard C function libraries to help developers migrate open source and desktop applications to Symbian OS.

Sittiphol Phanvilai from Bangkok, Thailand was the winner of Open C Challenge. This prize was for his MobiTubia application, where he received a cash prize of $10,000. Pu Zhihua was the First Runner-Up Winner for his LiveTraffic, TongRen was the second Runner-Up for his MobiClass application and Steve DeLaney was the Third Runner-Up for his ViewRight. They all received $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 respectively as prizes.

Lee Epting, the Vice President of Forum Nokia states that the participants of the competition had shown great creativity in the use of Nokia’s Open C environment while developing applications for use on the smartphone platform. They have devised methods of bridging existing mobile and desktop applications to S60 while making development in Symbian C++ of S60 platform easy. This in turn provides great opportunity in creating high-value mobile applications to be used in the worldwide Smartphone market.

The application that got first prize is a Flash Lite video player and YouTube portal application and its developer, a graduate student in Master of Engineering program in computers at Chulalongkorn University. It helps mobile users access fly clips with different methods and to browse and search for content on YouTube.

The application that got 1st place is the Live Traffic is software developed for traffic assistance that adopts FCD technology in acquiring traffic information whenever required while publishing this information to Nokia phone users with the help of EDGE or GRPS connections.

MobiClass won 2nd Runner up prize and is a virtual courseware application that is meant for multi-media use. The developer is a researcher at the E-Learning Lab of Shanghai Jiaotong University and MobiClass brings a new meaning to learning with its active notes and video playback.

ViewRight got 3rd Runner UP prize and is a streaming mobile video application that enables users to use their mobiles to watch television. These winners not only receive cash prizes, but also a free year’s membership in the Forum Nokia PRO developer program, marketing and business support for its members and free Symbian Signing.

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