A visit to various local focused mobile application sites doesn’t exactly make for impressive viewing.

Firstly, not all of them are open for business here in the southern tip of Africa- yes we are pointing at you BlackBerry App World and Android Market. And secondly, those that are open don’t really provide any apps with local flavour. Nokia is set to change this rather deplorable situation offering prizes of up to R1,000,000 in cash and rewards in their Calling All Innovators South Africa competition.

This rather impressive carrot is being dangled in front of the noses of the local developer community in a bid to get some good quality local applications going on Nokia’s Ovi Store. The challenge includes the development of applications & widgets, video, personalisation, games, audio, flash & active idle widgets, location based applications and podcasts.

As far as the prizes go they include:

Grand Prize winner: $85,000 USD in cash; premium placement featuring the winning application on the top page of Nokia\'s newly announced Ovi Store, where consumers will find the best mobile applications and content for their Nokia devices; and paid travel to demo the winning application at a Nokia-specified event.

2nd – 5th Place: $10,000 USD each in cash; premium placement featuring the winning application on a relevant category page in Nokia\'s newly announced Ovi Store, where consumers will find the best mobile applications and content for their Nokia devices.

Judge\'s Choice Award: The top 10 submissions will receive the Judge\'s Choice Award, which provides a one-year membership in Forum Nokia Launchpad (value of 300 euros). All Forum Nokia Launchpad members receive access to exclusive resources and support. It is designed to accelerate mobile application development and elevate developer\'s business visibility in the mobile world. Get more information about Forum Nokia Launchpad.

The Calling All Innovators competition is open to anyone, including mobile and web application developers worldwide, to submit their entries. All applications developed for South Africans and running on Series 40 or Series 60 devices will be considered.

Closing date for entries is 31 October, 2009, with the finalists selected and notified in December 2009. For more information about the competition visit http://callingallinnovators.com/southafrica/.