Hutchison handset spin-off INQ – makers of the low cost INQ1 ’social mobile’ won the award for ‘Best Handset’ at the Global Mobile Awards at Mobile World Congress last night. They beat giants such as Nokia and T-Mobile to the prize. This is a huge endorsement for their strategy and device and comes at an ideal time for them as they look to expand internationally beyond the confines of Three’s networks. We’ll bring you some comment from the team as soon as we can prize the champagne away from them.
Other winners at the awards were the BBC for mobile iPlayer, Nokia for Sportstracker and the government of France for government leadership.
We didn’t nominate o2’s Bluebook mobile address book backup service in our recent awards for a number of reasons. All discussed in this week’s 6th (and bonus) episode of the MIR Show:
Vodafone were rightly delighted to learn of their win in the Best Use of Public Mobile category in the MIR Awards 2008. Here’s the 2-minute individual award category video:
We’ve created some smaller MIR Show videos for individual award categories (based on the recent MIR Awards 2008). Here’s the announcement of the Best Value Product:
It’s time for the Mobile Industry Review 2008 Awards (formerly known as the SMS Text News Awards — before we changed our name).
It took us a long time. Months, in fact. Regular meetings, arguments, distractions, testing, pondering… but it’s here.
Yesterday the MIR Show team headed down to a swanky hotel in London to film the results… only to be rather impressed with the beautiful summer day. So we took to the Gardens at Temple, overlooking the Thames and delivered the results in glorious sunshine. (It’s rare to get a day like this in London — especially in October. It’s normally soggy rain, rain followed by rain.)
There’s a few contentious results. Even during filming, there were still discussions and rumenations. However I’m pleased to publish them.
We’ll have a full list up online shortly including links to all the nominees and winners.
CATEGORIES, NOMINEES AND WINNERS:
(winners are indicated in red)
Best Mobile Instant Messenger ( 02:19 ) Palringo
IM+
Agile Messenger
Goggle Talk on Blackberry
Trutap
Best Mobile Related Corporate Social Responsibility Story ( 03:04 ) Orange Rock Corps
Nokia for environmental friendly mobile charges
Stand By What You Say – Spinvox
Best Public Relations Campaign ( 04:33 )
LG Blog WOMWorld
Texperts
3MobileBuzz
Best Gadget ( 05:21 )
Loc8r (from glasto): GPS thing
Proporta mobile charger Flip camera
Mobile Industry Hero ( 06:29 ) Steve Jobs of Apple
Google Founders
Jyri Armstrong
Jay Fenton
Mobile Industry Villain ( 07:43 )
Ofcom The phrase ‘unlimited’
Vodafone porting
PhonePayPlus
Carphone Warehouse (for iPhone 3G launch)
Best Mobile Blogger ( 09:20 ) All About Symbian (AAS)
S60 Nokia Blog
Boy Genius
Stephen Fry
The Outsider
Most Innovative UK Operator ( 10:20 )
Vodafone 3 UK
Blyk
Best Mobile Application ( 11:23 ) Shozu
Shazam
Yap
Google Maps
Qik
NewsGator
JoikuSpot
Handy Taskman
Best Mobile Handset ( 12:37 ) iPhone 3G
Nokia N95 8GB
Blackberry Pearl
Nokia N71
Nokia N82
Best Use of SMS ( 14:22 )
Paypal
Crimestoppers Virgin Vie
Texamundo
AddisonLee
Clickatell FNB
Best Public Use of Mobile ( 15:25 )
Mediaburst SOS Response Vodafone and UN
Orange RockCore
Best Value Product ( 16:58 )
Google Maps
3 PAYG Broadband Clickatell
Spinvox Memo (it’s FREE)
Mippin – it’s FREE
Goosync
Best Use of Mobile ( 18:00 )
ShopQwik
Lastminute Fonefood Halifax Brooding Society
Best Mobile Service ( 19:08 )
Momail
Spinvox DeviceAnywhere
Shazam
Text answer services combined with Textperts and AQA
Skyfire
Best Mobile Industry Review Reader ( 20:32 )
Kip Hakes
Mike42 Terence Eden
Dan’s Stalker
Stefan
We’re recording the Mobile Industry Review Awards — both the nominations and the winners — tonight.
I’ve just overseen the creation of our fancy envelopes with the results inside.
SHHHH. Can’t tell you who’s won.
Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley will be presenting alternate categories, listing out the nominations — and then ripping open the envelope, announcing the winner — and then explaining our reasoning.
It’s been a bit of a while coming. The final deliberations took us something like 4 hours. But we’re done and we’re live on Monday.
I think it will probably have to be a separate video from the usual Monday show — so expect two on Monday.
Sony Ericsson has just announced their annual 2008 Sony Ericsson Content Awards and are calling upon entries for the same. The annual event honors outstanding achievements in mobile content development.
The company has opened up the entries for the competition beginning today and will continue till November 30, 2008 and is open for all mobile developers who have created content, applications and services for Sony Ericsson Phones. From all the submissions, finalists are planned to be selected somewhere in December and a winners will be announced in an official online ceremony on February 5, 2009.
This year, there are 7 categories earmarked for the event.
Being Productive
Going Green
In-Car Applications
Mobile Entertainment
Lifestyle Experiences
Themes and Graphics
Xperia X1 Panels
According to Sony Ericsson, the winners will be judged on ease of use, entertainment factor, innovation, look and feel, uniqueness, creativity and audio performance. Last year, the awards provided a great platform for exposure for mobile developers around the globe with RealNetworks, BitCycle, Opera, Gracenote, Metronize/Clavitones and Vringo winning awards.
Besides nominations for the Mobile Industry Review 2008 Awards, the other thing I’ve been looking at are trophies.
There’s a world of choice out there, especially if you’d like a cricket ball in a grasping hand, or a football (“soccer”) boot in motion. Or a medal.
I did for a moment drift off in a dream state thinking it would be rather cool to issue medals to winners. I gave that a good five minutes of joy before coming back to Earth. Our awards need to look good in the trophy cabinets of the winners.
11cm, 15cm or 20cm? Well, if in doubt, I’ve been picking the biggest. That’s how entrepreneurs do it, right? Buy the biggest.
And, er, get a discount.
I’ve ordered a few samples with the MOBILE INDUSTRY REVIEW logo engraved.
I was thinking silver. Then I moved to a bit of funky mahogany with silver. I looked at commissioning some sort of Motorola RAZR set into steel or the like — that would have been fun. And prohibitively expensive at 500 quid a pop. We’ve not been able to reach agreement with any potential sponsors ergo since it’s all being funded by yours truly, I’m taking a bit of a more direct approach.
I said to the chap it might be quicker — and definitely cheaper — BUYING 20 RAZRs and supergluing them a fancy stand. The chap was silent and didn’t ‘get me’.
I finally settled on glass. Then I’ve been sat pondering what kind of shape. A star? A weird half circular block?
Hutchison handset spin-off INQ – makers of the low cost INQ1 ’social mobile’ won the award for ‘Best Handset’ at the Global Mobile Awards at Mobile World Congress last night. 
They beat giants such as Nokia and T-Mobile to the prize. This is a huge endorsement for their strategy and device and comes at an ideal time for them as they look to expand internationally beyond the confines of Three’s networks. We’ll bring you some comment from the team as soon as we can prize the champagne away from them.
