Ericsson celebrated the brightest new ideas in telecommunications with the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards held in Zurich early in December. Together with an expert jury, the audience voted live in the four categories: Best Information Application, Best Mobile Game, Best Entertainment Application, and Best Corporate Solution.

The Ericsson Mobility World program in Australia is central to initiatives that stimulate and develop the market for mobile services in the region. Application developers acknowledge the unique market knowledge, technical services and operator relationships available via Ericsson Mobility World, and this has underlined the success of the program in Australia.

Swedish content development company Mobilehits has created a novel mobile data service. Quite simply, they track the music interests of young people by looking at what they download onto their phones as ring tones. With this information, they have an opportunity to push other music-related services and even real music to them, generating income for the entertainment industry, operators and network suppliers. Ericsson Mobility World has been key to their success.

Barcode Products won the 2002 Frontier Competition sponsored by Ericsson and The Australian newspaper. The contest was an initiative of Ericsson Mobility World to grow the Mobile Internet market (Frontier), and to find the best, market-ready mobile data applications.

FindMap, a mapping and mobile location services company, joined the Ericsson Mobility World Associate program two years ago. Since that time, they have taken advantage of the many services and resources that the program offers. Ericsson has benefited from the partnership as well, since FindMap is a cutting-edge company that works actively with customers to create applications that are compatible with Ericsson's handsets and network technologies.

A common question that I get when talking to mobile Operators today is 'What are the 3G Applications going to be?'. Not only is that a difficult question to answer, as many of them are not even developed (or started on) yet, but most people do not even know what the 3G handsets will look like. Today an even more urgent issue is what applications should be launched in order to secure GPRS success. As a matter of fact, the networks themselves only indirectly define what the applications will be - many applications will similar for GPRS and 3G, with some extra spice in 3G.

During the month of October, developers from all over the world are being invited to enter their applications and compete in Ericsson Mobile Application Awards 2002. Twelve finalists -- three each in four different categories -- will be selected by November 15, and invited to participate in the final competition and awards ceremony, which will take place in Zurich, Switzerland on December 3, 2002.

Turkcell GPRSLand, a mobile applications package jointly developed by Ericsson Mobility World and Turkcell, was named Best New Service at the World Communications Awards ceremony in London, England, on September 30, 2002.

Location-based services with positioning are one of the most interesting areas in the new world of mobile telephony. Key to these services is that the system knows the user’s location. The technology is available now, and all the new services being developed will immediately reach a mass market consisting of everyone who already has a GSM phone.

Sony Ericsson Issues “Application Proclamation” for the P800 Smartphone - Turn your code into cash!