Each of the awards finalists had five minutes to convince the voting audience that their application was a winner. Harald Walden, project manager of gaming at Synergenix Interactive, finished his presentation of Rally PRO Contest by challenging another player live via Bluetooth.

"Brave but stupid," was the comment Walden heard before climbing on to the stage. But he was undeterred: "As a game developer I don’t think there is any other way to present a game than by showing what it can do. Seeing is believing. It's that simple."

Synergenix Interactive's business model means that Synergenix doesn’t earn any money until the operator sells the game. "This works for us and for them,” Walden says. “It's a win-win situation. To encourage developers to create games based on the company’s gaming engine mophun 3D an SDK is available for free from the Internet. If someone tries to download a game to a phone that doesn’t have mophun, a link is sent out with instructions of how to download the gaming engine. The more games that are downloaded, the more money will be made for us, developers and operators."

Synergenix’s strength enables it to use such a business model. The company had a tough start in 1999 but was lucky to have the support of venture capitalists who believed in its ideas. "Today we are doing business with AT&T and Cingular in the US, Amena in Spain and BPI in Hong Kong,” Walden says. “The next market to capture is China. I heard about a ring-signal provider that experienced one million downloads within one month."

The gaming engine mophun 3D is tailor made for 14 mobile phone models from Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens and Motorola. The platform allows the game to configure itself according to the phone being used and the player's choice of playing via IR, Bluetooth or with the platform Terraplay via GPRS. These functions mean that players can challenge other players around the world. The game was released in the beginning of November.

During Ericsson Mobility World's matchmaking session at the application awards and Mobile Internet Forum, finalists and other content providers met investors and operators from around the world. The discussions were lively and new contacts were made. Some of the operators in the audience during Synergenix Interactive's presentation expressed their interest. Walden says the two days were the start of promising business opportunities.

Karin Hanson