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App awards dig into functionality

Lauren Kate Rawlins
By Lauren Kate Rawlins, ITWeb digital and innovation contributor.
Johannesburg, 10 Jun 2015
The MTN Business app awards will focus on content and not platforms when judging this year's winner.
The MTN Business app awards will focus on content and not platforms when judging this year's winner.

The MTN Business 'App of the Year' Awards will this year choose winners from genre-related categories, instead of platform categories.

The operator says it wants to move away from comparing "apples with apples" and rather compare lifestyle with lifestyle, or business with business.

"The new genre-based categories are much closer aligned to the way real app users evaluate apps when they choose to download them or not," says Mandisa Ntloko, head of marketing, MTN Business South Africa. "And this means all app developers are on a more even footing. So really any developer - big or small - could be a big winner this year."

The app competition is in its fourth year. In previous years, developers could only enter apps that were developed in a certain time frame. This year, the timeframe has been opened, due to the new categories, and any app is eligible for entry.

The new categories are:

1. Best Enterprise

o Media and communications
o E-commerce
o Business solutions and sales
o Utilities
o Navigation (and geo location apps)

2. Best Consumer

o Finance and banking
o Entertainment and gaming
o Media and communications (community and social)
o Lifestyle (health and fitness, and personal education)
o Productivity (utilities)
o Creative apps (photo and video)

3. Best Enterprise Development App

4. Best Breakthrough Developer

5. Most Innovative App

6. Wild Card (for apps that defy categorisation)

The overall MTN Business 'App of the Year' Award will be chosen from the above categories.

Judges will take product solution and design, creativity, usability and market impact, and long-term sustainability of the app into consideration when deciding on the winners.

Last year, LIVE Inspect, an insurance claim app that allows insurers to automatically assess damage to vehicles, claimed the overall winner's spot. Mobile payments app Zapper won the consumers' choice award and best Microsoft app.

In 2013, mobile payment app SnapScan was the overall winner. The app was later acquired by Standard Bank and is now used extensively countrywide. Other winners that year included the iOS DStv app, the Nedbank app suite and PriceCheck Mobile. PriceCheck went on to win International App of the Year in the US.

In 2012, the first year of the awards, the FNB Banking app was the overall winner, with the Discovery Health ID app receiving the award for the best iOS enterprise app.

Entries for the awards close on Friday, 26 June, and this year's App of the Year Awards ceremony will take place on 5 August in Johannesburg.

Click here for more details on how to submit an app for consideration.

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