MoneyWeb widget from Nokia

MoneyWeb widget is now available to South Africans

Nokia today announced the release of a second local widget, MoneyWeb, on the Nokia Ovi Store. This announcement follows shortly after the launch of the News24 widget in August this year. Both widgets will be hosted on Nokia’s Ovi Store, an evolving media service that consolidates Nokia’s existing content services into a one-stop-shop for free and paid coPntent.

“This widget is another big step for Nokia to provide ‘always open’ mobile access to local content and information providers like Moneyweb and News 24,” says Helen Jarvis, Nokia’s Services Marketing Manager.  “We have further localised the Ovi store by offering applications, widgets and much more for purchase using South African Rands, as opposed to the Euro based billing seen before. All this makes the store that much more accessible for South African users, and we cannot wait to entice more partners to join us in developing widgets and applications.”

Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition, a contest launched in July 2009 for developers to create locally relevant, best-of-breed mobile applications, has been extended to the rest of Africa and is open to both individual and company entries.

Nokia have also opened up OviMaps for developers as part of the Calling All Innovators competition.

“The designers of the best ideas for applications will be entered into a second stage of the contest where finalists will gain access to the beta environment and the tools to develop their ideas in practice,” explains Jarvis.  “This category of the competition really allows developers to be creative and to use their personal experience from using navigation tools to develop applications that will really add value to the user,” she says.

Nokia has extended the closing date for the Calling All Innovators Competition to the 15th of November 2009, and the winner will be announced on the 10th of December 2009.  Nokia will also be accepting direct submissions from those developers whose applications cannot currently be uploaded to Ovi Store.

“Someone is going to win this competition and the prize money is substantial enough that it could boost their business opportunities in software development,” concludes Jarvis.