Nokia One Connected World Event

September 16, 2009 by Bernard Leong
Filed under Events, Innovation & Technology

The Nokia One Connected World event happened in Hilton Hotel, Kuala Lumpur on 15 Sep 2009. Other than reporting on the progress of Ovi Store and launching new mobile devices (Nokia N97 Mini, X3 and X6), one other focus of the event is on 3rd party developers. We offer a short report on what transpired with the event and how three Singaporean companies have been successful with the developer competitions and funding offered by Nokia and her partners:

The Nokia Ecosystem: The first keynote by Vlasta Berka (General Manager, Nokia – Singapore, Malaysia & Brunei) set the theme “Ecosystem” and offered some recent numbers with respect to the growth of the handset vendor globally. Till date, there are a total of 1.1B Nokia mobile users. Since the launch of the Ovi Store since June 2009, both media content and applications are now playing a role in the mobile ecosystem.
Growth of the Ovi Store: Following on, we have Miikka Nevasalo (Head of Forum Nokia, Asia) who provided more information about the development of Forum Nokia. Till date, there are now about 4M Forum Nokia members and 1.5M unique visitors per month with the percentages of the global footprint spread between several continents: Americas 16.1%, Europe 50.4%, India 6.7%, China 6.7% and Rest of Asia 20%. With the iPhone dominating the smart phone market, Nokia is now working towards simplifying their platform development and expanding distribution thru the Ovi Store. This is furthered reinforced by Mark Olilla who talks about the Ovi Store. Since its launch, the registration of new users on the Ovi platform in August 2009 has increased by 2.5 times compared against the rate for the month of June (since its launch) and July 2009 combined. Till date, all the content and applications come from 180 countries with 5 languages, a lot of emphasis on locally relevant apps, 60% repeat visitors and 6 pieces of content uploaded per user.
Successes of Singapore companies in the Nokia Event: We last reported that the company 2C2P was a finalist to Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition. Now we got the official news that they won the Calling All Innovators as the grand prize winner in the Emerging Markets & Mobile Necessities category. The other two Singapore companies have also achieved important landmarks – Cell City, a recent finalist on the hackathon during the Nokia Developers Summit 2009 in Monte Carlo and BreakDesign being the first 5 winners of the Global Open Screen Project Fund (funded by Adobe and Nokia).

More details will follow from this post and so stay tuned.

For what transpired in the event, you can follow the twitter conversations which describe the entire event here.

About the Companies:

1. BreakDesign
Application: Breakdesign will be showcasing one of their most recent games called “That Roach Game”. This is one of the first games developed to be used in their future mobile games community called Barking Seed. The game has unique features such as online scoring with community features. Break Design will also have some of its previous games on show that will eventually link into the world of Barking Seed.

Company background: Breakdesign has been working with Nokia devices and Flash Lite for the past five years. Based in Singapore, Breakdesign has created many games and applications for clients and has now been awarded funding from The Open Screen Project Fund to develop its Flash Lite Games community called Barking Seed which will be released in January 2010.

2. Cell City
Applications: Cellcity will showcase two applications at the event. DBS Indulge features the DBS Bank lifestyles customer program on Nokia?s latest mobile phones. This is an extensive Food and Beverage Guide to Singapore, complete with descriptions, special offers, freebies, great wine offers, extensive search, maps and even directions to help you get there. Go Eat KL is drawn from Cellcity?s award winning Go Series of applications utilizing a mixture of GPS and WiFi LBS search functionalities to get you the food you want when you want it. Find it, rate it, share it. If you?re in KL, you need to Go Eat.

Company background: Cellcity is a digital publishing and visionary software company. It provides solutions for web and print publishers as well as TV broadcasters to get them to the mobile platform. The company has also created AdServXT, a comprehensive ad serving solution to enable anyone to monetize their applications and websites. The Cellcity platform enables content and service providers to deliver their solutions seamlessly to any digital or mobile platform.

3. 2C2P
Application: 2C2P’s Mobile Credit Card Terminal gives business owners the ability to charge a credit card/debit card, and to manage transactions securely from Nokia S60 devices without additional equipment. The application uses a standard Card Not Present message format, bypassing the need for a cardholder signature.

Company background: 2C2P (short for Credit Card Payment Processor) is an e-commerce payment provider offering innovative payment processing solutions for businesses in Asia-Pacific. Launched in 2008 as a spin-off of leading payment technology provider SinaptIQ, 2C2P has since established itself as one of the leading e-commerce payment providers in Asia-Pacific.
The 2C2P system is in compliance with the highest security standards, including the Visa3D Secure Security certified by Visa, MasterCard and JCB, and utilizes the latest web technologies to process mobile and e-commerce payment transactions efficiently while enhancing user experience.

Here are some of the photos taken during the event:

Photo: Before the Nokia One Connected World event started