Ericsson wants you!

Ericsson has launched its 2012 Ericsson Application Awards competition for Android application developers, with a particular call for Australian & New Zealand entrants - conspicuous by their absence in prior years.

Ericsson Australia's communications manager, Selina O'Connor, said: "Australia is one of the countries Ericsson draws end-users from to participate in the evaluation process along with China, UK and the US. For [the 2010 and 2011 competitions] roughly 250 Australian end-users evaluated the semi-finalist teams. But [there were] no entrants from Australia or New Zealand in [2010 and 2011] so now is a great time to show the others some Australian creativity and ingenuity."

Entrants need to develop an application based on the Android platform that addresses the theme of the competition and makes use of anyway one Ericsson Labs API. These cover applications just as mobile location and text to-speech. For the main competition, teams have to be registered by February 1 2012 and the final deadline for all entries is February 28. The competition as well has two optional preliminary mini-challenges, in September-October and November-December.

There are several prizes in each category: first place, EUR15,000 and phones from Sony Ericsson; Second place, EUR10,000 and phones from Sony Ericsson; third place, EUR5000; fourth and fifth place, honorary diplomas.

How to install the Ericsson Labs Android SDK

Instructions on how to install the Ericsson Labs Android SDK and set up the development environment are available here along with details of how to apply.