The grand prize winner, who won US$300 000 was Mooncoder from Poland. The winner’s application “Little Sailor” is a 3D yacht racing game that allows users to experience a realistic sailing simulation – with the help of intricate controls and colourful graphics. The LittleSailor application scored highest in the creativity, commercial potential, functionality, and user-friendliness categories. 

 

The award ceremony was held at the bada Developer Day in Seoul on December 8, which marked bada’s first-year anniversary. At the bada Developer Day, Samsung provided a guide to developing applications for bada; including technical support regarding the platform as well as more information about the certification and registration process of Samsung Apps.

 

The bada Developer Challenge attracted 2,077 teams from 54 countries. Samsung selected 34 winning applications, with the winners receiving US$2.7 million between them – as well as gaining marketing support to promote their applications on the Samsung Apps site.

 

“Samsung is excited to see such a great response from developers who entered applications to the bada Developer Challenge,” said JK Shin, president and head of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will roll out additional bada-based smartphones and continue to support bada developers in making and marketing high-quality applications.”

 

“We are extremely happy to receive the top prize in the contest organized by Samsung Electronics,” said Maciej Komosinski and Szymon Ulatowski, of Mooncoder. “We believe bada will evolve into a platform that offers great opportunities to developers through Samsung’s strength in the mobile arena. We will continue to join developer initiatives organized by Samsung in order to create more interesting and useful applications.”

 

Eight other winners also received US$100 000 apiece, including badaSports, Doogie, Bang, WAMO_Camera, TouchRetouch, Bling-Bling Reader and Parking.

 

In addition to the Samsung Wave – the first bada smartphone which launched in June, Samsung has launched additional models such as the Wave II, Wave525, Wave533, Wave575 and Wave723, none of which are currently available in SA. Sales of bada handsets are expected to reach 5 million units before the end of 2010.

 

Samsung Apps, Samsung’s application store, has grown with the success of the Wave series; the total number of application downloads worldwide is expected to surpass 50 million by December, demonstrating the rising popularity of bada apps among smartphone users. Launched in France, Italy and the UK in September 2009, Samsung Apps is now available in 118 countries, including South Africa.