Reliance Infocomm, in association with the National Association of Software and Service Companies, on Tuesday announced a nationwide contest for mobile application developers.

The contest is for selecting the best mobile applications and the best mobile application ideas from thousands of talented software developers from across the country, according to a release issued by Reliance Infocomm in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The company offers cash prizes of over Rs 1.3 million, with a grand prize of Rs 500,000 for the best mobile application, the release said.

Nasscom will be involved with the selection of the winning applications and ideas. The winners of the contest will get citations, cash awards and an opportunity to work with Reliance Infocomm to develop and deploy these applications on its Reliance IndiaMobile network.

The contest is open for registration from October 20 to December 6. The winners will be awarded prizes and citations on December 28, it said.

"We are happy to be associated with this unique initiative from Reliance Infocomm. The contest, focused on mobile applications space -- one of the fastest growing software product areas globally -- will provide the much needed push in this field, said Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom.
 
"It will definitely open up new avenues for the Indian software talent. The opportunity to develop, test and deploy in a live and world-class wireless network will open up new possibilities for the Indian developer community globally," he added.

"We hope the contest would encourage the blooming of creativity and innovative ideas from the developer community. Reliance IndiaMobile network is the only wireless network in the world where all handsets are Java and MMS enabled. This offers a great opportunity for mobile application developers to develop and add services to our R World portfolio," said Mahesh Prasad, president, applications and solutions group, Reliance Infocomm.

"We hope this will open up innumerable opportunities, both nationally and internationally, for the large number of software talents across the globe," he said.

The contest is open to any individual or group of individuals including students, partnership firms or companies with skills in conceiving, designing, developing and testing mobile applications in Java (J2ME) environment.

The winning entries may be launched on Reliance IndiaMobile's R World, a service that is currently used by over 4 million subscribers, all over India, it said.

The contest is organised as part of the Dhirubhai Ambani Developer Programme, a pioneering initiative in India to nurture talented software developers in the mobile application space, the release said.

The programme currently has about 9,000 individual developers and over 600 corporates with access to over 25,000 developers registered with it. The DADP community has already developed more than 25 applications for R world, it said.

The company hopes to attract many more talented developers into this programme from across the country through the contest, the release added.