In September this year, Samsung launched a mobile app development contest for Nigeria which surprisingly has attracted huge participation from Nigerian mobile app developers.

The Samsung Apps Developers Contest was open only to applications that had not been made publicly available to the market prior to the beginning of the contest.

Now after the initial selections and ratings by judges, it’s now time for the public to download, test and vote for their favourite apps. Voting starts tomorrow November 11th and ends November 23rd.

There are currently about 60 applications in different categories – Productivity/Tools (16) Education/Reference (11), Games: Casual Puzzles (10), Entertainment (8), Miscellaneous (8), Games: Arcade/Action (5), Social Networking (4).

Some interesting mobile apps include:

Corruption Monster is a game built on Java that helps you prevent corruption monsters from entering Nigeria. Basically, your job is to kill them. The more they escape from you, the higher number of corruption cases in the country which will eventually end the game.

Crime Stopper lets users send detailed report of a crime, accident or emergency and the location of the happenings to the appropriate authority (Police, Road Safety, Fire Service, NEMA, etc) within Nigeria. It’s built with Java.

Naija Places uses your current location to find businesses, utilities, landmarks, institutions and other important places near you. For now, it only covers Ikoyi.

iGoVote lets you find polling centers and contesting candidates for the upcoming Nigeria elections and is integrated with Google Maps. It’s built using Android.

Ise is an indigenious game (built with Java) played by the people of Edo state, similar to games like Ayo and Bantumi but with different strategies of play. Play continues until the seed distribution reaches an empty pot.

Mosquito Squish is aimed at confining mosquitoes to a small area (20%) of the screen. It’s built on Java.

Ludo brings the traditional Ludo game to your mobile phone, a game that makes you get all your seeds from the Red and blue bases (or more incorrectly basii) to the \’Home\’ which is at the center of the Ludo board. It’s built using Java.

NSEMarket allows users to track over 50 quoted companies of the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Built on Android.

ChatterBox is a bluetooth-enabled chat application that enables you and your buddies to chat with each other free of charge.

Mobile Quotes displays motivational quotes on your phone.

You can check out more mobile apps here.

Although I’m yet to test any of the apps, I’ll likely be reviewing any of these mobile applications that I find exciting and interesting. While these mobile apps are free to download, it is very likely that Nigerian mobile apps developers would soon start charging a fee for their apps.

According to a new report by Parks Associates, the North American mobile app market will reach $2 billion by the end of 2010. The report also shows that in-app ad revenue will surpass $860 million in 2014 and paid mobile app profits will exceed $4 billion.

It’ll be interesting to know how much the Nigerian mobile app market will be worth in 2015.

Samsung has just launched a mobile applications development contest, apparently the first of its kind in Nigeria, as a way of showcasing Nigeria’s talent and developing applications into the market place.

The idea is to help Nigeria take its place as a technology giant able to develop mobile applications that are relevant and useful within the Nigeria market.

According to Samsung,

The Samsung Apps Developers Contest is open only to applications that have not been made publicly available to the market prior to the beginning of the contest. Additionally, applications that have been entered in similar contests are ineligible for the Samsung Apps Developers Contest, regardless whether they were winning apps. Similarly, updated versions of applications that have been entered for in a similar contest are also ineligible.

All applications submitted for the Samsung Apps Developers Contest will be made available to all contest judges for free, exclusively for the purposes of judging. If contestants intend to sell their application after the conclusion of the contest, they may submit a “trial” version of the application for judging. We recommend that the trial version include full functionality, but with a timed expiration, rather than including limited functionality with no expiration. Judges will evaluate the applications based on only the functionality accessible to them.

Samsung also requires that all the applications must run on the Java, Android and Bada mobile operating systems and must be in English language.

Thus, developers are expected to design mobile applications and submit in 7 different categories, namely: Education/Reference, Games: Casual/Puzzle, Games: Arcade/Action, Social Networking & Lifestyle, Productivity/Tools, Entertainment + Media, Miscellaneous.

Contest Reward

Prizes will be awarded in each of the following categories:

1 stage selection (Per Category)

1st prize: N150,000

2nd prize: N100,000

3rd prize: N50,000

Overall (across all categories)

1st prize: N 1 Million

2nd prize: N 500,000

3rd prize: N 250,000

Contest Timeline

September 27 – October 31, 2010: Registration and upload of applications online by contestants.

November 1 – November 6, 2010: Initial selection and ratings by  judges.

November 8 – November 20, 2010: Public voting and selection of winners.

November 25, 2010: Presentation of prizes to the winners.

My thoughts

I’ve always been advocating for developer contests such as this. In a July interview published by YHP, I said:

We need to see web and mobile app development competitions sponsored by huge technology companies and targeted at University students.

I believe that this will act as a catalyst towards creating a vibrant mobile applications development space in Nigeria. My guess would have been that Nokia would take the lead, but they’ve shown that they’re late in the game (again).

Apparently, the two mobile phone manufacturers are both competing for a better market share in Nigeria, although Nokia seems to be the leader.

Samsung, on the other hand, would be looking to take an early-mover advantage in creating a mobile applications market in Nigeria, even though I think their move might just be to tap into the knowledge of Nigerian developers for mobile app ideas.

Will winners emerge from the mobile apps contest? I’m not sure, but it’ll be interesting to watch this space!

Described as “the best technology event that has ever happened in the history of the Nigerian web industry”, Barcamp Nigeria 2010 has been officially announced.

Born out of the desire to build connections between technopreneurs and discuss the potentials, challenges and prospects of the Internet and its tools and technologies within the Nigerian technology community, the first Barcamp in Nigeria was held on Saturday, April 25, 2009 in a quiet and friendly atmosphere at Tom Associates Training Centre in Lagos, Nigeria.

This year’s event with the theme: “Creating Local Content for Nigerian Web Market”, will take place on Saturday, May 22, 2010 at CITS University of Lagos.

According to the press release made available to me,

The selected Keynote speakers for this year’s barcamp Nigeria have been confirmed. They are Simdul Shagaya, the Founder of Alarena.com and Chinenye Mba-Ozoukwo of eShekel. The two speakers have firm grasp of the Nigerian technology market and will be pleased to share their insight with us at the event.

If truth be told, last years’ event was very successful as it achieved its goals and set the precedent for future technology-related unconferences in Nigeria. The keynote addresses were delivered by Justin Hartman, MD and co-founder of Afrigator and Victoria N’dee Uwadoka, Events & PR Manager, Microsoft Nigeria (West Africa Region). Read more here.

As participant and sponsor, StartupsNigeria gave the event a good media coverage via Twitter, NaijaPulse, Gatorpeeps and Facebook. This year, we’d likely be participating, but may not be able to cover the event.

If I’m able to attend, I’d likely be micro-blogging via Gistcaster or Yarnable, Nigerian versions of Twitter. That’s the least I can do to help local social media platforms grow and I’ll encourage other bloggers to do same. Oh and by the way, Barcamp Nigeria should also have a page on Gistcaster…”creating local content”.

For more information, visit www.barcampnigeria.com or follow on Twitter (though no updates since 18 August 2009) and Facebook.

Disclosure: I am not part of the Barcamp Nigeria event organizers. I don’t have any specific interest in Gistcaster or Yarnable. Neither have I been paid to promote them. My interest is purely based on helping local start-ups and social media sites get media attention.

When Globacom announced last week Tuesday that their subscribers can make free on-net Glo-to-Glo calls for a daily charge of N40.00 only, in a promo tagged Glo BIIIG DASH, it seemed like the smartest marketing campaign ever in the Nigerian highly-competitive telecoms market to attract more subscribers.

But actually it was a lame effort.

Industry analysts have suggested that the promo was in response to Etisalat’s promo that allows their own subscribers get back every minute they spend on calls without a daily rental fee.

Whatever the case, the party just crashed as Glo has experienced huge problems with their network for the past week. Yesterday, Glo sent an SMS saying:

Due to overwhelming response of millions of subs to the BIIG DASH, many of who engaged our network longer than anticipated, we are witdrawing this offer for now. Expect a wow package soon.

My thoughts

I’ve always argued against promotional efforts by telecom companies that seem desperate and overlooks the primary reason why they are in business – to satisfy their customers. In this case, Glo might think they’ve satisfied their customers, but they’ve just shown a lack of market and technical research foresight.

I think that if they really want to gain more market share, they had better concentrate on improving network service quality, excellent customer service initiatives, and improved product developments instead of running desperate and lame promotional and marketing efforts.

Just hope that ‘wow package’ wouldn’t be another silly promotional effort.

In what seems like a super Christmas deal, Microsoft, the world’s largest software company is offering Microsoft Office 2007 Student and Home Edition at N6,500.00 for 6 weeks starting from the 15th of December.

The software which is currently available for N18,000 in some stores will only be sold at that promo price in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. According to Microsoft, you can walk into any store where software is legitimately sold during that period and get it at that price.

However, this version contains only Word®, Excel®, PowerPoint® and OneNote®, so no Microsoft Access and Microsoft Outlook in this promo software package.

And here comes the best part: You will be allowed to install the software on up to 3 computers legally.

Thanks to Dejo at Digital Crossings for the tip!