Chance for application developers

It's a good time to be in business for software houses designing applications for mobile and broadband networks.

With Vodafone spending over $400 million on its network upgrade to wideband CDMA and Telecom committing $60 million to a CDMA EV-DO evolution, the move to third-generation mobile services is well under way.

And while the likes of Vodafone will import many of its own applications and Telecom will borrow content from its 3G partner Hutchison, the market for home-grown mobile services will be substantial.

In broadband, a shake-up in pricing of Telecom's Jetstream services and new wireless offerings from Woosh, BCL and Wired Country will fuel demand for new high-speed services.

All of that local activity will underpin this year's Ericsson transtasman Frontier competition, which seeks to find the best mobile and broadband applications developed in New Zealand and Australia.

New Zealand application developer IT Link last year picked up the supreme prize for its SalesLink software - a Palm-based application centred on an eight-step sales process, from acquiring customer details through to totting up their bills, printing their invoices and sending the sales records back to head office.

Since winning Frontier, SalesLink has gone global with the help of the Ericsson Mobility World forum.

The winner of Frontier will be announced in the New Zealand Herald Connect section and receive business-class travel to the Ericsson Matchmaking Session where Europe's network operators and venture capitalists are gathering.

All finalists will receive Sony Ericsson mobile phones, entry into Ericsson's Developer Day program in November and the chance to present their application to telecoms executives in Australia and New Zealand.

Developers in the mobile application space should visit Ericsson for information about rules, prizes and entry criteria.

Entries will be treated in commercial confidence. Applications open today and close September 17th.