03 February 2008

The Betavine Widget Competition
Don't Miss Your Chance To Win £20,000!

Betavine, a Vodafone Group R&D lab, is offering mobile developers an unique chance to win £20,000 in a new mobile widget competition.

The handsets being supported are based on the S60 platform, but the widget environment they 're launching is based on the Opera for Mobile 9.5.

For those who still don't know, mobile widgets are mini Web applications that reside on the phone but can be personalised to easily fetch relevant information from the web and present it to the user.

They provide 'always on' services based on the information users want to receive, and are a new touch point for how consumers use the mobile internet.

In addition to the cash prize, the winner will receive a commitment from Vodafone to promote the widget to users in one of Vodafone’s major markets. Two runners up will also receive a £1,000 cash prize. The judging panel, made up of Vodafone and industry experts, will be assessing the entries based on the following:

• Usability – how easy to use is the widget?
• Innovation – how creative is the widget?
• Value to users – what does it enable users to do?

All developers submitting widgets will also have an opportunity to make their entries available through the Vodafone Widget Manager Beta application, which is currently being rolled out across a range of 10 popular S60 handsets in Germany , Italy , South Africa , Spain and the UK .

Competition overview

The following bullet points summarise the key criteria of the Betavine Widget Competition. For the full terms and conditions, guidance on appropriate content and helpful advice on how to create a good widget user experience, visit Betavine’s Widget Zone at: