There is now just over a month to go before the Forum Nokia Calling All Innovators competition closes to entries. So it seems like an opportune time to catch up with Srikanth Raju, head of marketing for Forum Nokia, to find out more.

A big hurdle for innovative mobile applications is making a successful entry into the mobile marketplace. An innovative application breaks the rules and allows users to do something they have never done before, which presents its developer with a problem: How to persuade consumers they need something they never knew they needed.

Finding those rule-breaking applications and providing them with global exposure is the goal of the Calling All Innovators competition.

‘Calling All Innovators is about encouraging innovative developers to build on the technologies we provide in our devices,’ says Srikanth. ‘But it’s also about creating successful applications and a profitable business relationship. So we don’t stop at simply saying “this is the best application”; Calling All Innovators is about engaging with the winners on a one-to-one basis. We do this by getting them in front of Nokia stakeholders, giving the application premier placement in the Ovi Store, and undertaking developer co-marketing, among other initiatives aimed at supporting the developer. It’s very much about moving developers all the way from initial interest to successful commercial implementation.’

As such Calling All Innovators is a single element in the overall Forum Nokia developer offering. ‘Competitions cannot be a company’s developer outreach strategy,’ says Srikanth. ‘They have to be part of a broader strategy, but they are an excellent way of accelerating developers from curiosity to commercial launch.’

This year Calling All Innovators has also been used by Nokia to engage with device users in addition to developers. ‘The hackathon at this year’s Nokia Developer Summit was about closing the loop between developers and users,’ explains the Forum Nokia marketing head. The competition within a competition was based on ideas generated by users from a promotion for the Nokia N97 mobile computer, run by the Nseries device program. Device users made suggestions for widget applications they would like to see on their device and these ideas were codestormed by selected developers at Nokia Developer Summit.

Each year Calling All Innovators focuses on specific types of applications. This year there are four categories:

• Internet Innovation: looking for websites or S60 WRT widgets.
• Flash: rather obviously for Flash Lite applications or content. 
• Emerging Markets and Mobile Necessities: the broadest category for any technology, but limited to applications that must run on Series 40 devices in the Emerging Markets segment.
• Apps on Maps: which, unlike the other categories, is looking for ideas for applications that can be implemented in Nokia Maps using WRT technology.

Having a section for Flash applications means that Calling All Innovators appears to overlap with the Open Screen Project Fund initiative, being run jointly by Adobe and Nokia.

‘We have already received hundreds of submissions for the Open Screen Project fund,’ says Srikanth. ‘But, only a handful of those will get selected. With all the interest in Flash coupled with its maturity and Adobe committing to create a runtime for multiple screens, it's important for us to recognise as many developers as possible. Also the Open Screen Project fund is a longer term initiative. The Flash category in Calling All Innovators offers developers who are ready for market an earlier opportunity to showcase their work and, if they win, take advantage of the prizes to instantly monetize their application.’

Srikanth also notes that Calling All Innovators is another opportunity for Nokia to emphasise its support for Flash technology.

Selecting the winning application will be the responsibility of a wide range of Nokia stakeholders. While Srikanth expects the entrants to be diverse, there are clear criteria the winners will need to meet. “The first thing is that any application has to have a mobile component,” says Srikanth. “But then it must also raise the bar on the available content. For example, a Flash application simply can't be another Tetris or solitaire game (although I'm a huge fan of both). Then the application must also make the best of the device and technology capabilities. So, looking at Flash again, a winning application is likely to make use of the new ActionScript APIs to access information such as location or use a device’s media functionality. And of course, whatever the style of application it must be solving a problem in a way users will find simple to use.”

A good pointer to the other criteria the judges will be applying can be found in the Calling All Innovators prize giving video on the Nokia Developer Summit site, according to Srikanth.