By Emeka Aginam
Nokia has made its promise as part of its commitment in  empowering software incubators with IT tools, as no  fewer than  10 local independent developers and 6 local student developers  were given Lumia 800 smartphones  on Monday in Lagos.

It would be recalled that Nokia as part of its support for  2012  Microsoft Imagine Cup student technology competition had promised  at a Microsoft Developer Phone Camp event in April  this year that it would award each developer who succeeded in publishing an app to the Windows Phone Marketplace by the middle of May with a Lumia 800, as well as the top two teams who came out of the Imagine Cup national finals in Port Harcourt.

At the event that attracted team Nigeria that represented Nigeria at the just concluded 2012 Imagine Cup in Sydney, Australia and second-place team among others, Nokia and Microsoft encouraged awardees to continue to innovate and turn their ideas into working applications. While Microsoft and Nokia  emphasized their commitment to supporting developers and providing a marketplace for them to put their products into the hands of millions of consumers,

Teemu Kiijarvi, Head, Developer Experience, Nokia West Africa told the gathering that ,  “Nokia and Microsoft as partners are working very closely, on a global and Nigerian level, to create opportunities for entrepreneurs and students to bring their ideas and products into global awareness, adding that,  “Both Imagine Cup and the developer training event are great examples of our partnership”.

Similarly,  the  Marketing Lead for Microsoft Nigeria, Awawu Olumide- Sojinrin, said, “We have a wealth of talented developers in Nigeria and are happy to see them being recognised. We hope that the phones they receive today will inspire them to start thinking about new ideas for the Imagine Cup 2013 competition in Russia next year. We hope that this year’s competition will be the best year yet for Nigeria, and we hope to see more participants than ever before.”

Meanwhile, the  top two teams from the 2012 Imagine Cup National Finals that were  awarded phones are the winning national team, Team Gravity comprised of Oludayo Ali and Timileyin Okoya, who attended the worldwide finals with their project, SwiftER, an emergency response healthcare solution and the second-place team, TechInnovations, who designed a solution called ‘Eye On’ to solve medical issues.

Meanwhile, the Imagine Cup 2013 season was officially launched on 29 August, along with the announcement that Microsoft has redesigned the competition around three new core competitions – World Citizenship, Games and Innovation – and more than doubled the prize money to US$300 000.

Through these changes, Microsoft hopes to inspire more students and encourage a wider variety of aspiring innovators to participate.