On Tuesday, Nokia announced the winners of the Lumia Apps Olympiad, the month-long event for up and coming mobile app developers to create apps for Windows Phone. The competition which was open to the public and supported by Evernote, Radya Labs, Kompas Gramedia, and Merah Putih Incubator began in mid November and attracted over 420 participants.
The winners, the full list of which can be seen on this Nokia Indonesia Community page, each received a Nokia Premium Developer Program membership worth $1500 as well as prizes from the owners of the API that they used to create their apps. First place winners also receive a Nokia Lumia smartphone. Apps that made it into the final stage of the competition will receive promotional push by Microsoft Indonesia and Nokia Indonesia.
As this is a primarily a university oriented event, the university with the most winners will receive a Nokia Innovation Lab during 2013, which is a program by Nokia Indonesia to encourage student developers to create mobile applications. Gajah Mada University, which collected 31 points from six gold medals and one bronze became the recipient of this major prize. The program consists of course materials, workshops, and dozens of Nokia phones.
Ridi Ferdiana, a lecturer from Gajah Mada University who also runs Microsoft Innovation Center at the university is eligible for recommendation to be inducted into the AppCampus program which provides research grants of up to $75,000. AppCampus is a joint program by Microsoft, Nokia, and Aalto University.
“The number of local application developers in Indonesia has grown very quickly. Indonesia has very creative developer talents, significant business opportunities, and a chance to jump into the international app market”, said Maretha Dewi, head of developer experience at Nokia Indonesia.
The company has been on an aggressive drive to push local developers to create mobile applications that run on its platforms, both the S40 and Windows Phone environments. To date, Nokia Developer has 12,000 Indonesian developers under its wings and held dozens of developer events throughout the year.