Huawei has announced the winners of the 2021 edition of the Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest (Apps UP), with four African apps being recognized and celebrated.
Top among the four African apps was South African-based personalized fitness training app, Coresthetics, which was adjudged one of the Best App Awards in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, along with US$15,000 in prize money.
UniAPS, a calculator and course generator app from South Africa, also emerged bagged an Excellent Student Award, with $5,000 in prize money, while Droppa (a delivery service management app) and Secura (a microinsurance app) received Honourable Mention Awards, each of which come with $3,000 in prize money.
“The Apps UP contest is a great initiative from Huawei, and I hope that we continue to encourage app developers to make apps that are beneficial to society. One piece of advice that I have for developers would be to think more about your onboarding experience, and let users test it out to see what the app does and understand the problems they may face,” said Ahmad Abugosh, an Apps UP MEA judge and director of marketing and learning programmes, AstroLabs Middle East and Africa.
Other award winners included Real Car Race Game 3D: Fun New Car Games 2020, LittleAstro and Scary Teacher 3D, each winning a Best Game Award, while Blind Assistant, Limit and Emergency Buddy conquered the Best Social Impact App Award category. These winners were each rewarded with $15 000.
The 2021 edition of Apps UP saw more than 2 100 individuals and teams from over 170 countries entering the contest. All submissions were carefully evaluated based on their innovation, social value, business value and user experience (UX) by a jury consisting of leading regional industry experts. The competition concluded on 10 October with the public voting stage; public votes accounted for 10% of the final results. App submissions were seamless, intelligent and innovative, and they contributed to the robustness of Huawei AppGallery.
The winners of the eight categories were:
- Best App Award ($15 000 each): WashyWash, Handyman Calculation and Coresthetics
- Best Game Award ($15 000 each): Real Car Race Game 3D: Fun New Car Games 2020, LittleAstro and Scary Teacher 3D
- Best Social Impact App Award ($15 000 each): Blind Assistant, Limit and Emergency Buddy
- Excellent Student Award ($5 000 each): Handyman Calculator, UniAPS and The Muslim Diary
- Honourable Mention Award ($3 000 each): Quran University an Educational Online Learning, STEPPI, Droppa, Secura and MyTV+
- Tech Women’s Award ($5 000 each): AlMosaly
- Best HMS Core Innovation Award ($5 000 each): Blind Assistant, Limit and Mobile Gamepad
- All-Scenario Coverage Award ($5 000 each): AlMosaly
Adam Xiao, MD, Huawei Mobile Services and consumer cloud service for Huawei Consumer Business Group MEA, said: “Creating functional, smooth and intelligent applications is not an easy task, and through Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest (Apps UP), we aim to reward the developer industry for their outstanding contribution. This year’s competition was extraordinary due to the quality of apps submitted, and the new categories added garnered tremendous interest, particularly the Women’s Tech Award that saw over 600 submissions. We want to congratulate all the winners for their impressive submissions that aim to benefit our societies in different areas.”
The 2021 edition of the Huawei HMS App Innovation Contest (Apps UP) was launched in June and lasted more than 100 days. Submissions came in from all regions including China, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The competition’s total prize pool amounted to $1-million, with a reward of $200 000 in cash prizes for each participating region.
