Last week was Microsoft Mobile Acceleration Week 2011 in Israel, where inneractive, an app monetization exchange, helped judge an app development contest for the week. This contest saw not only indie developers creating apps in the tight time frame, but big names were present also. Three winners, who also have apps on other platforms, included Doat, Touch Apps, and Babylon. All three received the Nokia Lumia 800 as prizes. Runner up was WorldMate, a well known cross-platform travel app.
From the app descriptions written by inneractive, who reported on the event:
Doat - "A mobile app that will change the experience of searching on your phone. Instead of presenting non-optimized links as search results, Doat offers your HTML5 apps based on your search query. The UI of the Windows Phone app is beautiful and actually very different than the same app on other competing platforms."Touch Apps - "A less well known developer, Touchapps has seven apps all together on various platforms and spent the week developing one of their top apps called Makeup Girls. Yes, I know how it sounds, but it is actually kind of brilliant. Maybe me or you are not the target audience, but the ability to choose a picture and apply makeup as you see fit appeals to millions of girls across the world, as the app’s download numbers have shown. Well, now Makeup Girls, following in the footsteps of iOS will be available to Windows Phone users."Babylon - "As the leading name in text translation, it was only natural that Babylon would transition over to mobile devices. And so they did. Already available on iOS and Android, Babylon for Windows Phone allows you to translate any word, in any language, to the language of your choice, in real time. Of course, there is a lot more to the app including a currency converter, since presumably you will be using the app when traveling. The UI is super simplistic and hence very intuitive and does exactly what it is meant to do, how it is meant to do it."
This follows the four major apps unveiled at Microsoft Mobile Acceleration event in New York. Sure, while these apps aren't unique to the platform or a major game changer, it's good to see quality choice coming to Windows Phone, which will slowly dissolve the problem potential buyers have with Microsoft's OS - the lack of big name apps.
Source: inneractive; Thanks, Amir, for the tip!
