Mobile operater vodafone is hoping to spur the development of applications for its 360 platform through the Vodafone App Star competition with a €1 million total prize pool.

Although developers from anywhere can enter the competition is primarily European focused. Developers have until the end of the month to submit their app into one of eight markets namely UK, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

Based on the decision of a panel of judges, the best entry in each market will win €25,000, with second and third prize picking up €15,000 and €10,000 respectively. The first prize winner from each location will go through to a second round, which will be based on public votes. The developer whose app gets the highest number of votes picks up an additional €75,000, with second place scoring an extra €25,000.

The accountants amongst you may have noticed that only totals €500,000 but the competition is set to be run twice, with the second one due to be run in the second half of 2010.

Vodafone's 360 apps are based on the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) development platform, which is set to be folded into the Wholesale Application Community which was announced at Mobile World Congress last month.

Why did Vodafone opt for its own platform rather than one of the existing major operating systems such as Android or Windows Mobile?

Vodafone launched 360 four months ago with two flagship Samsung devices, the H1 and the M1 which are based on TI's OMAP and LiMo OS, but support to Symbian S60 has also now been rolled out so there are 50 handsets supporting 360 to date, with 30 more expected to be added to the list by the end of the year.

According to Vodafone there are more than two million handsets out in the world that can run 360 apps. At the moment there are around 7,000 apps in the App Star and around 90,000 active users who have downloaded a little over a million apps.

Mobile apps are becoming increasingly important, with almost every smartphone operating system now sporting some kind of development and distribution system, be the Apple App Store, Windows Mobile Marketplace, Android Market or Blackberry thing.

Developers can enter the Vodafone App Star competition at the JIL site. µ

source:theinquirer