Wii-type wand for cellphones wins innovation award

Innovation took the spotlight on Wednesday night as the overall winner of the Mobile Innovation Global Awards was announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Walking away with the top honour was visionary technology company GestureTek, developer of the first gesture-based interface for mobile applications

Barcelona’s National Palace was the tradition-laden scene on Wednesday night of the recognition of the most cutting edge technology of a new era at the Global Mobile Awards gala evening. Francis MacDougall of visionary technology company GestureTek accepted the top award for innovation.

Prior to the Mobile Innovation Marketplace in Barcelona, sponsored by Ericsson, innovators submitted Award entries in one of five categories, which were reviewed by a panel of judges that included senior executives and managing partners from 3i, Carmel Ventures, Ericsson, Global View Partners, Rogers Wireless, SFR, Telecom Italia, and Telefonica O2 Group. The judges said: ‚It was a difficult choice. We selected GestureTek as the overall winner because of the truly innovative interface that we believe will help exponentially improve the consumer experience on mobile handsets for menu navigation, content selection, gaming, and other uses in the future. ‚User experience has been a major headline within the mobile industry. GestureTek gives the mobile industry a great competitive interface that can be incorporated into many current and future handsets removing a significant barrier to consumers use of mobile devices today.‚ The shortlisted companies in each category presented their technologies, applications and services over two days at the Mobile World Congress. The winners of each category were announced and presented at the Mobile Innovation Marketplace yesterday. From the category winners, GestureTek was the overall winner. The judges said: “Following the innovation seen at the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau it was great to see 10 new innovators in Barcelona. They are all worthy category finalists and emphasise the depth and strength of innovation in our global industry.‚ ‚Driven by entrepreneurial spirit and technical excellence, the potential of these companies and their innovations is enormous. The immense enthusiasm and commitment shown by all the finalists companies has proved that they have what it takes to succeed in the mobile world,‚ said Bill Gajda, Chief Commercial Officer of the GSMA.

GestureTek’s EyeMobile Engine is a software-only solution that uses the existing camera on a mobile device to deliver a gesture-based interface to mobile applications. An entertaining and intuitive alternative to conventional button interfaces, EyeMobile allows users to do anything they would normally do with their mobile device, such as play games, answer calls, make menu selections or scroll, pan and zoom in on photos, simply by shaking, rocking or rolling their device.

Says Bill Leckonby, CEO of GestureTek, ‚We are thrilled to have won this award. It demonstrates the growing popularity of gesture-control solutions for mobile gaming and navigation, and further reinforces the solid reputation that GestureTek Mobile has earned with developers, mobile device manufacturers and carriers. Similar solutions are moving to laptops, consoles, PCs and set top boxes.‚

The Mobile Innovation Global Awards form part of the GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Marketplace, which encourages and promotes new ideas for the mobile industry by bringing together smaller companies developing innovative mobile products, industry investors and mobile operators.

Overall Winner

Most Innovative Wireless Device-centric Technology

Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform

Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market

Most innovative Consumer Application or Service

Most Innovative True Mobile Start-Up

More information on the Mobile Innovation Market can be found online.

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