Google offers $10m in cash prizes for innovative developers of open mobile solutions based on Android

This Information came from William Foster, PhD- November 12th Following the earlier November 2007 announcement of the formation of the over 30-member Open Handset Alliance led by Google, HTC, T-Mobile, Motorola and Qualcomm, aimed at developing a non-proprietary approach to mobile handset design based on the Android open mobile platform developed by these five and others, Google announced:

1. It is making available $10 million to support the award of cash prizes ranging from $25,000 to $275,000 to developers of open mobile solutions based on the Android platform, whose applications would be selected by a panel of judges.

2. The $10 million would be distributed equally between two successive competitions:

i. Android Developer Challenge I: submissions to be made from January 2, 2008 through March 3, 2008, with the 50 most promising entries being recognised by the end of March and each receiving $25,000 to fund further development.

ii. Android Developer Challenge II: open until May 1, 2008 to successful awardees under Challenge I, who would be eligible for ten awards worth $275,000 each and another ten worth $100,000 each.

3. A panel of technology and mobile experts selected from the Open Handset Alliance member organisations and the industry in general would judge all qualifying entries.

4. Awards would be given to developers whose applications leverage all that the Android platform has to offer in order to provide consumers with the most compelling experiences.

5. Developers would retain all intellectual property and other rights to their applications.

Google co-founder and President Sergey Brin commented, “We’ve built some interesting applications for Android but the best applications are not here yet and that’s because they’re going to be written by developers”.

NB: Google adds that “Challenge II will launch after the first handsets built on the platform become available in the second half of 2008″. That does not seem very clear to us unless it means that the names of the awardees will be announced by the end of May but that the money will not be forthcoming until the launch of the handsets.

Advertisement