First place winners in each category receive a $150,000 cash prize and remain in the running to win additional grand prizes which include major marketing campaigns. One game and one application will be chosen as grand prize winners. The grand-prize winners and runners-up will be announced at an award event later this month to be held at Nokia’s US flagship office in Sunnyvale, California.
The “Calling All Innovators 2011” Contest used a unique blend of consumer and expert judging to determine the category winners. The initial judging was based on total app downloads by consumers and sales totals in Nokia’s Ovi Store. The top 10 apps in each category (five paid apps and five free apps) advanced as category finalists and were then judged by an expert panel of judges from AT&T and Nokia. Nokia chose this blend of consumer and expert judging to help ensure that the best apps were not only the most popular apps but also provide the best user experience.
“Nokia phones continue to provide great, rich user experiences and Ovi Store continues to grow in popularity,” said Andrew Osis, president and CEO of Poynt Corp. “We are honored to be selected as first place category winners and are happy that Nokia users and the expert judges feel our app is worth highlighting.”