Co-Sponsored by Samsung Electronics and Sun Microsystems, the Competition Aims to Stimulate Innovative Mobile Applications and Services Using Java Card Technology
CANNES, France (3GSM World Congress) - An international jury has selected the ten finalists from more than 180 entries in the 2004 Axalto SIMagine worldwide developer contest. Over the past five years, the Axalto SIMagine challenge, which aims to discover and promote new ideas for creative and powerful mobile services, has become the event of reference in the mobile value-added services world.
The exceptional prizes - grants worth up to 70,000 euros (approximately 90,000 US dollars) plus the valuable development resources to take the winning ideas through to market and real-world commercial outlets - attract entries from mobile service specialists, application developers, students and amateurs from all over the world. Using Java Card technology for SIM cards, which was invented and pioneered by Axalto, service providers can take advantage of its popular multi-application capability to quickly and continually deliver more value-added services, create new revenue opportunities, increase their subscribers loyalty and grow their customer base.
The three winners will in addition receive a VIP trip to the Olympic Games in Athens, and have the opportunity to work with Axalto to take their innovative ideas to market.
The tough task of picking the winners from the extremely varied and creative group goes to an international jury drawn from major players in the mobile telecommunications world, including leading operators such as Orange UK, Telefonica Moviles, TIM and China Unicom, key Java technology figures and standards setters.
"To Axalto, the most rewarding aspect of the contest is to help bring all these creative new wireless services to market faster, and have all the players in the industry benefit from this collective spirit of invention we have access to" stated Olivier Piou, CEO of Axalto. "Subscribers show strong interest in new services that enhance their business, domestic and social lives, and today's SIM technology is transforming the development and delivery of those services. The Axalto SIMagine contest continues to catalyze the creative ideas from all over the world that leverage SIM capabilities and meet operators and subscribers demand."
The ten finalists are:
- Beihang University (China), "Mobile i-home System" project
- University of Science and Technology of China (China), "my card"
- E.S.I.M. (France), "Nomie"
- SoNear (France), "SmartLock"
- WLAB S.r.L (Italy), "Key Tone"
- Mobiltek sp. (Poland), "Voice Messaging System"
- S-Tecno, an ACE company (Portugal), "SIM Call Center"
- Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), "SIMblog"
- Ruanqwit Jenqsuebsunt (Thailand), "Neighbours"
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), "iSeek"
The ten finalists will be demonstrating their exciting new SIM card applications for GSM, GPRS, UMTS and 3G mobile phones during the 3GSM World Congress at Axalto booth A22, Hall 1. The final winners will be announced at the Axalto gala dinner on February 25.
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About Axalto
Axalto, formerly known as Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, is the world's leading provider of microprocessor cards (Gartner 2003, Frost & Sullivan 2003) -- the key to digital networks -- and a major supplier of point-of-sale terminals. Its 4300 employees serve customers in more than 100 countries, with worldwide sales reaching 3 billion smart cards to date. The company has more than 20 years' experience in smart card innovation and leads its industry in security technology and open systems.
Axalto continuously creates new generations of products for use in a variety of applications in the telecommunications, finance, retail, transport, entertainment, healthcare, personal identification, information technology and public sector markets. Smart card solutions provide convenience, security and privacy to public and private services operators, their customers and end users. For more information, visit us at axalto.com.
For further information, contact:
Emmanuelle Saby
Public Relations Manager
Tel: + 33 1 46 00 71 04
Mobile: + 33 6 09 10 76 10
esaby@axalto.com
© Press Release 2006
