Nokia Siemens Networks supports GSMA Smarter App Challenge: how smart is your app?

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June 27, 2012
IN: Innovation
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More mobile operators than ever are supporting the Mobile App Challenge, a GSMA initiative to drive improvements in application connectivity, power consumption, network reliability, security and other areas. GSMA’s recent Smarter App challenge, which was part of this program, incentivized developers to implement GSMA’s recommendations, create more efficient mobile applications and enter them in the challenge. All entries in the competition had to be commercially available mobile apps, available on any platform, and the judges were Korea Telecom and Nokia Siemens Networks Smart Labs, as well as GSMA. At its Smart Labs, Nokia Siemens Networks also had another important role, which was to conduct performance tests on all the applications that reached the final rounds of the competition. Based on the results, we provided a comprehensive test report to GSMA to help it identify the most network-friendly applications.

At Mobile Asia Expo last week in Shanghai, China, GSMA announced the results of the challenge. The winner of the 2012 Smarter App Challenge developer competition was Jun-ho Choi from Seoul, South Korea, who took home a grand prize of $10,000 for his “Flow It Restaurant” app.

The explosive growth in the use of smartphones has an impact on network performance, in some cases almost bringing networks to a standstill. This issue affects everyone in the mobile industry and has implications for the user experience, software platforms and applications. To meet this challenge, our experts at the Nokia Siemens Networks Smart Labs are trying to find the best combination of network technology enhancements, software platform efficiencies and developer education to ensure that applications are as network-friendly as possible. This kind of “developer education” is also promoted by industry-wide initiatives such as the GSMA’s Smarter App challenge. Ralph Cochrane, community manager of the company loudSource, who organized the challenge for GSMA, expressed his gratitude to Nokia Siemens Networks: “It’s great to see GSMA members getting involved to showcase great developer talent and educate the market about important issues for all of us, like app efficiency. Thank you for helping to promote the GSMA Smarter App Challenge.”

Nokia Siemens Networks opened its first Smart Lab in 2009, and since then has established four more labs, across North America, Europe and Asia. By engaging with all players in the mobile ecosystem – application developers, smartphone manufactures and mobile operators – the aim is to work together to improve network performance. In fact, this collaboration has already resulted in major network improvements, including lower signaling load, increased cell throughput and higher WCDMA capacity.

This post is by Gerald Reddig from Nokia Siemens Networks’ Mobile Broadband team.