RCS DevChallenge Contest - The Winners
After all the hard work of presenting their entries at the DevChallenge Meet, the winners of the RCS DevChallenge contest three categories – Best RCS Mobile Client, Best RCS PC Client and Best RCS Innovation - were announced in a Press Release at the start of the Mobile World Congress, 2010.
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Best RCS Mobile Client Award for their ‘RCS4me’ application |
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Best RCS PC Client Award for their ‘Movial Communicator’ |
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Best RCS Innovation Award for their ‘Meet me at RCS’ solution |
Representatives from the winning companies received their DevChallenge trophies from the GSMA’s Chief Technology and Chief Strategy Officer, Alex Sinclair, at a small ceremony held on the GSMA’s App Garage exhibition stand at the Mobile World Congress.
The winners were extremely positive about the DevChallenge initiative and how it has helped to encourage interest, innovation and investment in RCS.
'RCS4me' by Ecrio WINNER BEST RCS MOBILE CLIENT
“First, I would like to congratulate GSMA on doing such a wonderful job in promoting RCS in the industry. As a direct result of these efforts we witnessed a clear increase in the interest in RCS from operators globally. In addition, the GSMA sponsored RCS Dev Challenge has given a small company such as Ecrio a platform to showcase our technologies and products giving us tremendous international exposure.”
What is ‘RCS4me’?
Ecrio’s FastTrack™ framework lets developers in Java, Flash, Android etc add rich communications to applications for mobile phones, PCs and more. No specialized tools or knowledge of complex technologies like SIP, IMS or RCS are required.
In screen #1, a family communication app, members use services and functions like Presence, real-time messaging, Voice over IP and Location. Presence information, seen as a green indicator on the family member’s picture, shows “Grandma's” status.
In screen #2, Grandma talks with one family member while answering a multiple-choice message from another. “Conversation Mode” helps her track the dialogue.
For more information: www.ecrio.com.
'Movial Communicatior' by Movial WINNER BEST RCS PC CLIENT
“Movial is proud to have been recognized for excellence as the Best RCS PC client. The RCS DevChallenge was very, very competitive and the award panel consisted of leading operators and RCS equipment vendors. This award is a testament to our employees, partners and customers on efforts in pioneering the PC customer experience for consistent RCS user experience across devices.”
What is ‘Movial Communicator’?
Movial Communicator provides a complete RCS client for Rich HD Voice, HD Video telephony, enhanced address book and messaging based on RCS R2 Social Presence. Product supports also the multi-device requirements on Mac OS, Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms including 4th screen tablets.
Additionally MMtel (the 3GPP/NGN IMS Multimedia Telephony Service) and OMA are supported. The improved user interface enables theming, drag and drop actions, animations, pre-view of favorite website as part of Presence, picture in picture full screen video and one-way video. Movial Communicator is selected by two mobile operators for commercial IMS deployments in Q2 2010.
For more information: www.movial.com.
‘RCS for you and me’ by Genaker WINNER BEST RCS INNOVATION
“Genaker has been actively engaged in the GSMA Rich Communication Suite initiative since its early days. With more than six years of experience developing SIP/IMS solutions, Genaker is able to grasp the operational challenges that will be faced by upcoming Mobile 2.0 services. This experience, and our engaged and enthusiastic team, allows us to address such challenges in an innovative way creating new win-win opportunities for end users, operators and all stakeholders in the RCS value chain. We are very thankful to the GSMA to provide us with this opportunity.”
What is ‘RCS for you and me’?
When an early user subscribes to the RCS service, convinced of all the potential communications he could have with his contacts, he finds that most of those contacts don’t have the RCS service.
Genaker's innovation allows this subscriber, instead of looking helpless to his list of non RCS-enabled contacts, to invite his friends and then enjoy the benefits of the rich communications.
As soon as the invited contact receives the invitation and follows the link, his terminal is identified and a suitable RCS client is delivered or the correct parameters are sent to the existing client in the subscriber's terminal. This avoids the frustration of the subscriber caused by not knowing the exact application to be installed or the configuration parameters to enter.
For more information: www.genaker.net.
‘A proven success’ - where does the RCS DevChallenge go next?
With 21 companies presenting nearly 40 entries in this inaugural year of the RCS DevChallenge contest, the Judging Panel was very impressed. Aude Pichelin, Chair of RCS and Director of Service Standardisation, Orange commented that "The RCS DevChallenge has proven to be a success, and shows that RCS devices and clients are available today to support the commercial launch of next-generation multimedia services."
At the Mobile World Congress, the AppGarage DevChallenge demonstration area was continuously busy with exhibition visitors – all showing great interest in the applications and devices on show, right up to the very end of the last day! John Hamill from Vennetics, who was demonstrating the company’s ‘moozler’ service, summed it up as follows – “it wasn't just the high foot-fall that was impressive but also the seniority of the attendees, the level of knowledge about IMS/RCS and the genuine engagement in the application concepts. Everyone else that I talked to from the DevChallenge entrants were similarly impressed.”
The GSMA DevChallenge team will be reviewing all the inputs and talking to the sponsors over the coming months in order to decide where the DevChallenge might go. Watch this website for details later this year or send us an email to request information of any future DevChallenge activities.
