GestureTek, a pioneering world leader in computer vision control technology, won the category Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market. The company provides gesture-based, camera-enabled interactive solutions for presentation and entertainment systems. To put it simply, it brings the Wii experience – the handheld, wireless controller for console games – to the mobile phone.

“Much of it is entertainment,” says Francis MacDougall, CTO and co-founder of GestureTek. “There are millions of games out there, and our system enables control by gestures, by moving the mobile phone in the direction that you want the content on the screen to move. In the business area, it is mapping applications that drive us forward.”

Integrated with a GPS, the technology allows the user to, for example, scan a map on the mobile phone screen simply by moving the phone itself.

“This award gives us validation,” MacDougall says. “We’ve been looking for a push to persuade operators and handset manufacturers to implement this technology properly, and this will give us a measure of power to convince them that this is where the industry needs to go.”

Ericsson sponsors the Mobile Innovation Awards, and Mark Jefford-Baker, Innovation Director at Ericsson, says that the dramatic changes in the telecommunications industry have made it vital for companies to be innovative.

"That is why Ericsson sponsors the event, to recognise and stimulate innovation," he says. "Many of the winners of these awards have gone on to become very successful."

One of them is Shozu, who won the award last year and whose mobile multimedia delivery platform provides two services: ZuCasts and Share-It. Share-It enables a one-click upload of multimedia files from the handset to photo sharing communities and other web-based destinations such as Facebook or Flickr. Basically, it is about making it simple for the user with one push of a button. Take a picture, click once, and it uploads to the communities and other destinations that you have registered on your mobile phone.

ZuCasts enable automatic delivery of published multimedia content to mobile phones with no user intervention. If your friend on a community uploads information, it will appear on your mobile phone automatically.

"The award gave us recognition," says Mark Bole, CEO of Shozu. "And it has inspired our team, the people who actually work at Shozu. That is very important. We've been able to close deals with major handset manufacturers to preload our service onto their devices. The industry is more aware of us these days."

The other winners of The Mobile Innovation Awards were:

Audience Inc. - Most Innovative "True Mobile Start-Up"
Tagattitude - Most Innovative Consumer Application or Service
INSIDE Contactless - Most Innovative Wireless Device-centric Technology
Flexenclosure AB - Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform