The ‘Appzone Champions 2012’ Award Ceremony saw mobile application developers honored for excellence in seven different categories. The competition, now in its second year, looks to recognize developers who have been successful in the development of applications on the Appzone, Sri Lanka’s first third party application development platform. This year’s event donned the theme of ‘ entrepreneurship’ to emphasize the importance of an entrepreneurial spirit in information & communication technology, and for the first time a separate category also honored Android application developers.


Grand Prize Winner, Kumara Hewage Chaminda Prasad

Etisalat CEO, Dumindra Ratnayaka, commented on the Appzone, “The Appzone was something that we developed in conjunction with hsenid in order to empower ambitious Sri Lankan technocrats with a tool that they could use to create mobile applications and a channel through which to market them. At Etisalat we are about innovations that improve your life, and the Appzone not only gave developers an outlet to use their creativity, but the applications themselves improved the value of our offering to our subscribers.”

Commenting on the theme he added, “We want aspiring developers to evolve an entrepreneurial way of thinking, we want them to see needs that are in the market, and design applications that can bring elements together to satisfy that need. The Appzone itself works on a revenue sharing model, and developers earn 70% of the total revenue generated through their applications, allowing them to become entrepreneurs.”

The competition kicked off last December, and this year was open to all developers not just university students. The categories were Information, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Business and Education, and for the first time a special Android category was also featured. The grand prize winner was awarded a trip to visit Google in Singapore, with the runners up receiving Huawei tablet PCS and smart phones. The winner in the Android category was also awarded a cash prize of Rs. 100,000.

Etisalat also conducted a workshop on digital media on the same day as the award ceremony that was open to all the developers who entered the competition. The workshop looked at the leveraging of digital media as a medium for communication and marketing. The Appzone, which has received many honors in the past including, an mbillionth award, continues to grow now hosting over 380 applications.