There’s a good chance you didn’t even know it was going on, but last week Microsoft hosted a competition for mobile application developers on its Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, and yesterday announced Networks in Motion as the winner.
The startup was one of six finalists – selected out of a pool of 50 applications – invited by Microsoft to come present ideas for applications running on Windows Mobile and get certified for the upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is supposed to become the big, central commerce and distribution point for WinMo apps that is currently lacking.
The company is widely expected to introduce the latest iteration of Windows Mobile at next month’s TechED 2009 conference in Los Angeles (11 May), although devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 won’t start shipping until after the Summer. Microsoft’s a heavyweight in the smartphone OS market but is getting some serious heat from Apple and its iPhone / App Store (which is about to hit 1 billion downloads), and is going to be facing even more stiff competition on the mobile application front from RIM / Blackberry, Nokia and Google Android in the coming years.
Microsoft is hoping to up the ante with its new mobile OS and its own version of the App Store, but is evidently going to need a lot of good mobile applications once the Windows Marketplace kicks off, and in that sense hosting a competition was probably a good idea (there will be more of those in Europe and Asia in the near future by the way). Too bad for Microsoft, there was little buzz about the event and press coverage of the outcome is virtually nowhere to be found.
Anyway, the six finalists were:
Brighkite, the location-based social networking service
Motolingo, a telematics solution that will monitor car diagnostics and report mobile phone behavior in the car
VisTracks, enterprise app for real-time product location and tracking company shipments
Networks in Motion, turns GPS-enabled mobile phones into full-featured navigation devices
VoiceMuffler, real-time, two-way speech-to-speech translation designed for foreign military personnel and civilian travelers
DJ Nitrogen, facilitates legal sharing of user-generated content, such as ringtones and music mash-ups
Yesterday, Senior Business Development Manager on Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team Brian Hoskins announced Networks in Motion to be the winner, on Twitter no less.
The startup is the maker of Gokivo Navigator, an interesting application that brings real-time turn-by-turn visual and audible directions to GPS-enabled mobile phones, combined with hyper-local search and location-based services. In light of the event, Gokivo got some new features to its core offering, including the ability for users to update their Facebook profile with the specific place they are (address/map). They’re on our radar now.
Besides the advice it received from and connections it made with Microsoft developers and external experts at the Incubation Week, Networks in Motion will receive ‘early placement’ in Windows Marketplace for Mobile once it’s launched, and also took home a Zune music player.
(Via Digits)
“The startup was one of six finalists – selected out of a pool of 50 applications” – wow, Microsoft had people knocking down their doors to participate – 50 applications!
“winner also took home a Zune music player” – now I understand why.
trial version possibly..[:)]
“Microsoft’s numerical dominance of the smartphone market”??
Um, Microsoft has never dominated the smartphone market – that would be Nokia or if you are thinking only of the USA then that would be RIM.
Heck Apple sold more iPhones than all Windows Mobile manufacturers combined in Q3 2008.
-Mart
the smartphone OS market.
But you’re right, WinMo is no. 2 after Symbian, changed the wording a bit.
If you are talking OS then Windows Mobile is number 4 worldwide after Symbian and then Linux and then the iPhone OS. Sales of iPhone OS devices (which includes almost as many iPod Touches as iPhones) surpassed the sale of all Windows Mobile devices in 2008.
-Mart
here’s my uninformed 2 cents’ worth of advice for microsoft:
step 1
- make apple apps work on windows mobile.
- make j2me apps work on windows mobile.
- make android apps work on windows mobile.
- make symbian apps work on windows mobile.
- steal underpants.
step 2
?
step 3
profit!
I would agree that you are uninformed. They are already profitable. Your novel idea to support other OS platforms is rediculous, it translates to giving away profit, not increasing it. But stealing underpants is always good.
I wouldn’t be so dismissive of Microsoft. They have a record of success in OS markets that is dominate.
They took Apples idea of the visual OS and out sold them, dominating market share.
They took Novells idea of the comodity based network server and not only dominated the market, but beat them into submission.
Then xbox, you get the idea. I know you fanboy don’t recognize this fact, but Microsoft is good at being sucessful, even thoughyou seem to only acknowledge their failures.
They are good.
All about Microsoft by best meta-search engine @ http://search.m...;sa=Search#1102
you’re lame. nobody cares about your spam. drink motor oil and die.
Networks In Motion…. Research In Motion……. there’s gotta be some legal issues about that.
Why did they win???? It’s not a new concept… Garmin Mobile, amazeGPS, BBmaps, Google Maps… there’s so many already
Winner got a Zune!
Sounds prestigious.
The Zune is a strange prize for a company, but I imagine that this is still valuable:
“Networks in Motion will receive ‘early placement’ in Windows Marketplace for Mobile once it’s launched”
Even though they don’t have the momentum, buzz or appeal of the AppStore right now, that’s still worth a fair chunk of income for the company.
Disclaimer: I own an iPhone and like it.
OMG, if I knew they were giving away Zune’s, I would have entered my cold-fusion powered OS holobands.
boy, everybody is playing catch-up at this point, huh?
Can I join in please? LOL
congrates dude’s