By Fredrick Obura
Mobile phone manufacturers Nokia and Samsung have re affirmed their commitment to support local applications.
In a strategic move geared towards boosting local technology and entrepreneurship prospects, Samsung has confirmed plans to provide support to local developers.
The firm will aid developers in deploying their applications on the popular android platform. The support will involve hosting commercially viable applications covering a range of categories on its application store.
Speaking at the Google Student Summit held in Nairobi, Jaco Van Zyl, the Samsung Electronics Africa product manager said the initiatives would help boost local application globally through structured marketing.
More support
“Kenyan application developers on the android platform should have equal access to other global developers to showcase their solutions,” he said.
“They already appear to be gearing up for the available opportunities which is encouraging to device manufacturers.”
In a statement, Nokia East Africa said it would be hosting a mobile application development competition on June next week to promote programming culture in the country. Dubbed “Nokia Hack” the competition will challenge participants to develop the best application for smartphones. “We want to recognise and reward local developers by giving them a platform to create their best application with,” said Peter Karimi, business development manager EDX, Nokia East Africa.
“We will also work closely with them to refine the applications for publishing on Nokia Store and have already seen great traction regionally and globally for downloads of these smartphone apps.
About 100 developers will compete winner getting Sh1 million.
