South Africa’s Team WorkMode and Nigeria’s Team SOP won first prize in the Student and Company categories respectively at the 2014 Ericsson Application Awards, beating off competition from 300 teams from 63 countries.
Team WorkMode won first prize for their collaboration app, while Team SOP came out on top for its app which monitors electricity supply.
“We felt that Team WorkMode showed a strong business potential, and their focus on design and usability helped them when it came to innovation and addressing the theme of apps for working life,” the jury said.
Jacques Marais of Team WorkMode said: “This award will help us to build our business and allow us to develop not only this app but also some ideas we have around education in South Africa. It will also enable us to purchase hardware so we can expand to different platforms. It’s a real boost.”
Of Team SOP, the jury said: “Team SOP presented a strong case of using technology in a way that anyone could understand value and would invest in. They cleverly combined consumer, society and business benefits around lifting transparency of power delivery in a well designed package.”
Toks Ogun of Team SOP said: “This award means we can continue to expand and develop our app, which monitors electricity supplies. We can see a market in parts of North America, in South America and in India and we will continue to develop our idea.”
Bina Chaurasia, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Ericsson, said: “We would like to offer our congratulations to both teams, who faced hard competition from all over the world. At Ericsson we often talk about the Networked Society and how mobile and digital technologies are increasingly expanding into more areas of society, business and our private lives. The winning apps strongly reflect this trend, as well as this year’s theme of ‘Apps for Working Life.’ We wish our winners every success in the future.”
