Nokia Indonesia together with Microsoft Indonesia held its Nokia Lumia Developers Day 2012 last week in Bandung. With the launch of the WP7-powered Lumia 800 and 710 imminent, they want to boost the marketplace with more apps – especially local ones. The event surprisingly attracted 1074 registrants on day one, and 810 developers attended the event in one room where they coded for more than 12 hours to submit an app to the Windows Phone Marketplace. The winners were awarded Nokia Lumia 800 handsets and also will get media/PR exposure through Microsoft and Nokia media/PR activities, both through this event and future Windows Phone promos in the country.
After hours of hacking and coding, a grand total of 173 apps were submitted, which were then reviewed and dwindled down to 21 apps to be judged for the prize. With Narenda Wicaksono (developer operation manager, Nokia Indonesia), Irving Hutagalung (technology advisor, Microsoft Indonesia), and Puja Pramudya (Microsoft MVP & master trainer for the event) as the judges, they eventually announced 8 winners.
The winners were: BuzzleMall, CitizenHero, TheGarbager, GogoKeto, Movieblist, ShelterView, Spothemall, and Puppet Solitaire. The winners all come from developers from universities such as the Bandung Institute of Technology, IT Telkom, and the University of Indonesia.
What’s next after this event? It was announced that there’d be an ‘Amazing Nokia Lumia Apps Challenge’ which is a contest to build a prototype of your application with the Windows Phone SDK and register it before the March 31st deadline. If your app is approved, a Nokia Lumia 710 will be sent to your address for testing purposes. Then after 30 days your app must be published to the Windows Phone Marketplace; and if you have published 3 apps before June 30, 2012, the Nokia Lumia 710 will be yours to keep.
Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Irving Hutagalung said:
Nokia and Microsoft will continue to engage the developers to ensure that their apps are submitted to the Marketplace worldwide. On top of that, for other participants who have not submitted their apps, we will also continue the engagement to include them on our app creation process, such as to invite them to future trainings and workshops, to provide them support to submit their to-be-created apps.
Nokia’s (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) Lumia will be launching on February 17th in Indonesia, and the Windows Phone Marketplace has already opened in the country in readiness for its new customers. If Nokia and Microsoft can work out the payment method with the telcos and prove that they can win over both developers’ and customers’ hearts again, the Lumia could prove to be a serious challenger to Android, or even the aging Blackberry, here in Indonesia.
[Disclosure: Nokia promoted its developer days across the region at our recent 'Startups in Asia' event in Singapore, where the company also served as a sponsor. But of course we remain independent on this issue].
Link to full article
For a one-stop to all events related to or concerning entrepreneurship, certain industry-meets-business forums and seminars in Singapore, check out our Calendar. If not, you can also follow our bite-size updated posts for upcoming events for the week.