Selection for the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards was in full swing when the team of selectors started looking at the 275 applications submitted. Rolf Weiss, Head of Communications in the DACH region, was impressed by the sheer quantity of submissions that came from 41 different countries, and the quality of the applications.

As the list was narrowed down to the top 20 applications in each area, special "industry experts" were brought in to test the applications. "We narrowed down the list of gaming applications, but we needed some people in the target group to test the games," Weiss says.

Finalists in the enterprise category are XMS Penvision (Sweden), LocatioNet (Israel) and VISIARC (Sweden). For the entertainment category MadWaves (UK), Media Republic (the Netherlands) and tilllate (Switzerland) will go to the finals. In gaming Media Scope (Germany) mobilkom Austria (Austria) and Synergenix Interactive (Sweden) made it to the finals. And the finals for the information category are MOBILOCO (Germany), MobiMate (Israel) and NewBay Software (Ireland).

"A couple of local kids tested the gaming applications on some mobiles. Passing some of the levels was a nightmare for the grown ups, however, the kids just figured things out faster than we did. They gave their opinions and these were taken into consideration when narrowing down the list."

Of the 275 applications received, only 17% were within the gaming category. Enterprise and entertainment held steady at about 25% percent each and the information category had the most submissions with 92, or 33%.

"We are seeing a clear move towards colored applications, compared to the last two application awards," Weiss says. "Almost all new handsets feature color screens so this is a natural change. We also saw a much larger number of Java applications compared to last year."

The finalists at the Ericsson Mobile Application Awards 2003 will be announced on November 25 at the Fifth Mobile Internet Forum in Zurich and have the opportunity to present their services to an exclusive audience consisting of executives from mobile network operators and venture capitalists. The audience determines the winners in the four categories through live voting.

Aimée Ravacon