Forum Nokia today announced the final winners in its global Calling All Innovators contest for mobile applications and solutions to help improve the quality of life on the planet, and issued a call for a new round of compelling mobile application submissions in the competition’s next phase.

The winners were honored at the Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators Award Ceremony during the annual GSMA Mobile World Congress, and were selected from among nearly 1,000 developers who competed in Eco-Challenge, Emerging Markets and Technology Showcase categories with mobile applications designed to contribute toward building a better world.

The next phase of Calling All Innovators announced today in Barcelona challenges mobile and web application developers worldwide to submit best-of-breed applications in three categories: Internet Innovation, Flash, and Emerging Markets. Prizes include cash, the opportunity to demo at Nokia World in September, and Spotlight placement of their winning application in Nokia’s newly announced Ovi Store.

Challenged to create applications to improve the quality of life around the world, the grand prize winners of Calling All Innovators are: GreenDrive by Road-Guard (Israel), in the Eco-Challenge category; Nano Ganesh by Santosh Ostwal (India), in the Emerging Markets category; and X Dancery by Simlife Ltd. (China), in the Technology Showcase category.

Each of the grand prize winners received a cash award of USD 25,000 and will receive help in distributing their mobile applications to consumers worldwide. First place winners in each category received USD 10,000, and second-place winners each received USD 5,000.

“The high caliber of these nine winners in the first iteration of Calling All Innovators underscores the remarkable, ongoing creativity and innovation that currently defines the mobile developer community around the globe,” said Rob Taylor, Director of Forum Nokia.  “In the next phase of Calling All Innovators, Forum Nokia challenges developers to help further drive the enhanced use of mobile devices in real-world scenarios with truly innovative applications and services that are designed specifically for the Nokia N97, built with Flash technology, or specifically targeted at users in Emerging Markets worldwide.”

During the first round of Calling All Innovators, nearly 250,000 unique visitors and more than 12,000 developers from around the world registered with Forum Nokia, the world’s largest mobile developer community.

The nearly 1,000 developers from 57 countries who submitted mobile applications were narrowed to 11 finalists in January, with a panel of judges selecting the final winners in each of the following categories:

ECO-Challenge: Applications or solutions to minimize mobility’s global environmental impact and enable consumers to make sustainable lifestyle choices that reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint.

- Grand Prize: GreenDrive (Israel) - An application that promotes 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 application that makes choosing public transportation easier, combining up-to-the-minute mass transit information with recommendations of the best restaurants, entertainment, hotels and shopping in more than 150 cities throughout China.

- 2nd Place: Ticketek Mobile Ticketing (Argentina) - A Series 40 and S60 Java electronic-ticketing application that reduces paper consumption by allowing consumers to use a barcode stored on their phone to gain admission to events.

- Runner-up: Green Phone (India) - An S60 application maximizing battery life through improved regulation of device backlight, WLAN, Bluetooth and charger power consumption.

Emerging Markets: New mobile solutions to improve the daily lives of millions in developing nations, focused on areas such as education, health data access, infotainment and agriculture.

- Grand Prize: Nano Ganesh (India) - This application allows farmers in India to establish remote contact with distant, modem-equipped electric irrigation pumps , to check on power supply and pump operation without the need to travel long distances .

- 1st Place: mPedigree (Ghana) - This application allows users to text-message at no cost a quality-authentication code found on the packaging of anti-Malarial and other medications to a provisioned mobile shortcode in order to guard against counterfeit drugs believed to be responsible for an alarming number of deaths, especially in the developing world.

- 2nd Place: DigitallCS (Digital Internal Control System) (Mexico) - With this application, agricultural co-ops can inspect the growing practices of their members and upload the data to a website for reporting and analysis in order to verify the growers’ adherence to standards that include Fair Trade Certified and Certified Organic.

Technology Showcase: Applications using Flash Lite, Java, Python, open source or other technologies supported by Series 40 or S60 devices that create a compelling end-user experience for individuals or communities:

- Grand Prize: X Dancery (China) - This application, fully optimized for the S60 5th Edition’s touchscreen UI and motion sensor technology, and with advanced 3D-graphics rendering capabilities, analyzes any MP3 file to automatically generate a unique tempo-based game for each selected musical track.

- 1st Place: kReader Mobile (U.S.) - This multi-language text-to-speech application 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) - This application 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.

- Runner-up: PhotoMap (Germany) - This application digitizes and stores a photograph of any fixed public map taken with a camera phone for easy access, browsing and geo-referencing on the mobile device.

In the next round of Calling All Innovators, Forum Nokia is challenging developers to create applications that will enhance the use of mobile devices in real-world scenarios, in the following categories:

- Internet Innovation - Calling on web developers to transform consumer-focused ideas into real applications on Nokia devices using technologies that include Nokia Web Runtime, XHTML, CSS, Java Script, AJAX, widgets and other standards-based web technologies.

- Flash - Challenging creative developers and designers to build compelling applications that expand the capabilities and user benefits of Flash Lite on Nokia S60 devices.

- Emerging Markets - Urging developers to create innovative applications across mobile technology platforms - ranging from SMS through Series 40 and S60 device platforms - in order to meet the needs and improve the daily lives of millions living in rural and semi-urban areas worldwide.

The “Internet Innovation” category is being conducted in tandem with Nokia’s Widget Design Competition, which invites consumers to submit their best ideas for new widgets to be featured in Nokia’s newly announced Ovi Store. The winning designer will receive a Nokia N97 pre-loaded with a working version of the winning widget. Winning widget ideas will be announced in March, and those ideas will be made available to an elite group of developers to compete face-to-face at the Nokia N97 Calling All Innovators “Hackathon” during the Nokia Developers’ Summit in Monaco on 28 - 29 April 2009.

Application submissions will remain open through 30 June, at www.callingallinnovators.com, with regional finalists announced on 15 August. The grand prize winners in each category will be announced at Nokia World in September.

More information about the grand prize winners of Forum Nokia’s Calling All Innovators contest can be found online at www.callingallinnovators.com.

The launch of the next Calling All Innovators competition, including complete guidelines and rules for the three new categories, will be available on the contest website starting on 13 March 2009.