Finalists selected for BlackBerry Challenge are to develop apps for Blackberry PlayBook tablet. The finals are taking place at The Conference in Malmö next week and the winning app will be promoted on BlackBerry App World.

Research In Motion (RIM), the manufacturer of BlackBerry®, is partnering with Media Evolution, the company behind the annual media event The Conference, to host the BlackBerry Challenge contest for professional app developers. The five finalists selected today by the judging panel will compete to produce the best app for the BlackBerry® PlayBookT tablet. The finales are taking place on August 24-25 during The Conference in Malmö.

The finalists selected are:
Screen Interaction
Ovelin
Tunaspot
Enjoy Sweden
Saguro

Ola Larsén, Head of Alliances and Developer Relations Nordics at RIM, and member of jury: ”The jury is very impressed by the contributions we have evaluated so far. It’s exciting to see that our Nordic developers produce such high quality apps, even from an international perspective. The final selections are very well thought-out and fulfill all the conditions to become popular apps in the Nordics and beyond.”

Reza Assareh, Screen Interaction: ”We are very happy to be nominated for the finals. The competition provides an opportunity to develop for a new platform and we will be developing further on the BlackBerry PlayBook platform. Screen Interaction is a developer company focusing on usability, development and design. Therefore, BlackBerry PlayBook is a good match from several perspectives. High performance and Flash support enable us to focus on the user experience and functionality.”

About BlackBerry Challenge
The contest opened on May 30 for professional app developers to develop an app for the BlackBerry platform with focus on the PlayBook tablet. Each company presented their app to a jury which selected the five finalists based on their concepts. In the finals the jury will put great weight on user-friendliness and the graphical interface. Additional elements are also important, for example if the app has a Nordic focus, connections to social networks and if the app builds on new technology such as WebWorks and HTML5.

The five finalists will complete the design and build of their apps during The Conference in Malmö on August 24-25. Experts from RIM and Swedish subsidiary TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) will contribute with tips and comments in order for the finalized app to meet RIM’s high quality standards. The finals will take place live in front of delegates at The Conference.

The winner will be announced August 25 at 2:00 PM at The Conference. The winning app will be made available and promoted on BlackBerry App WorldT.

The jury consists of experts from RIM, Media Evolution, Idélaboratoriet and Kaospiloterna, and the blogger Johanna Nylander.

About BlackBerry App World
BlackBerry App World is a strong and growing application store with over 3 million daily downloads and a wide variety of apps available.

• Over 1 billion apps downloaded to date
• Approximately 3,000 apps available for PlayBook
• Over 35,000 applications available on App World

About BlackBerry PlayBook

• Ultra Portable: high resolution 7-inch LCD display, weighing only 425 grams
• True Multitasking: multi-threaded QNX operating systems allows simultaneous and seamless delivery of true, real-world multitasking
• Multimedia power house: two HD video cameras with a 7″ cinematographic viewfinder and full HDMI support
• Uncompromised web browsing: full support for Adobe Flash and HTML 5
• For further information visit http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/.

Developing for BlackBerry
There are over 400,000 developers in the global BlackBerry community. Among the benefits to these developers are the opportunity for international business, the popular service BlackBerry Messenger (the world’s fastest growing mobile social network, with over 45 million users), and full HTML5 and Adobe Flash support. For further information visit http://us.blackberry.com/developers/.

Product images: http://www.rim.com/newsroom/mediagallery/

Contact: Bite Communications: rim@bitepr.se, + 46 (0)8 402 01 00

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

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