The contest is open to any start up with a great idea for a mobile site, service or application and entrants can compete for the €150,000 prize fund by submitting their entry to vodafonemobileclicks.com. The competition is open now, and the closing date for entries is midnight, 22 August 2010.
Each entry will be judged on five criteria: originality, creativity and innovation; technical and operational feasibility; economic and financial viability; value to end users; and finally, on the quality of the management team.
The judging will take place over three rounds. Each competing market will draw up a shortlist of their five best local submissions, a winner will be selected from each shortlist and finally all local winners will be invited to represent their country in a live final at the PICNIC Festival in Holland on 24 September 2010, where the overall winner will be chosen by a panel of mobile industry experts, including Om Malik, founder of the GigaOM Network, and Rudy de Waele, founder of dotopen and co-founder of the Mobile 2.0 series of conferences.
Launched in 2008, Vodafone Mobile Clicks is a Vodafone initiative designed to accelerate innovation in the mobile internet sector across Europe. It is now the biggest mobile start up competition of its kind.
“Through initiatives like Vodafone Mobile Clicks and our wider developer outreach programme, we’re finding ways to help stimulate, grow and commercialise the innovation that is at the heart of the mobile ecosystem,” said Lee Epting, director of content services at Vodafone Group. “Vodafone Mobile Clicks is really about empowering ambitious, young start ups to develop their ideas and accelerate them into market. I’m excited to be judging another year of inspiring entries from entrants across Europe.”
Previous Vodafone Mobile Clicks winners include Layar, an Amsterdam-based company who developed an augmented reality service that allows mobile customers to see information on nearby points of interest, for example houses for sale, popular bars and tourist information, by simply looking through a phone’s camera lens. The service launched in June 2009, and throughout 2010 the platform has seen 20% month on month growth. Layar has recently announced a strategic partnership with phone manufacturers LG and Samsung.