Students Square-Off at Mobile App Competition

PROVO, Utah – Dec 06, 2012 – Cat herding, ninja fighting or photo gaming — it could all be found at the Mobile App Competition hosted by the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology.

In order to help students better understand the importance of mobile business communication, the annual competition invites students to create App Store-ready apps.

“The purpose of this competition is to help students get more excited about mobile development,” says Josh Nicholls, second-year MISM student from Seattle who helped organize the competition. “These competitors have built really cool apps, and I hope it will motivate others to do the same.”

Apps were evaluated based on user experience, design implementation, business application and number of downloads by a panel of judges that included Rollins Center academic director Stephen Liddle and MokiMobility executives Tom Karren and Jared Blake. Of the 40 teams registered, 25 entries were presented at the competition with the top 18 moving on to the final round.

“I was very impressed by the marvelous job the students did,” Liddle says. “Choosing a winner was a difficult decision—the students and presenters were phenomenal.”

None of the semifinalists walked away empty-handed. All were awarded a piece of the $15,000 prize money — each team taking anywhere from $250 to $3,000.

The grand prize went to Intuiplan’s app for simplifying daily operations for franchisees. The second runner-up was the ARD Sales app for mobile field sales people in industries like pest control and home security. The Space Jumps game app came in third as well as being named crowd favorite.

Executives from MoneyDesktop gave iPads to the Growing Pains team for best use of the Ruby coding language. The Analytics Award for the most downloads and unique visitors went to the Ninja Tactics team.

“The competition is a great momentum builder,” says CJ Lewis, Intuiplan team member and a senior accounting student from Gilbert, Ariz. “BYU does an excellent job of helping startups gain traction.”

To learn more about the competition or to see a complete list of winners, visit mobileapp.byu.edu.

The Marriott School is located at Brigham Young University, the largest privately owned, church-sponsored university in the United States. The school has nationally recognized programs in accounting, business management, public management, information systems and entrepreneurship. The school’s mission is to prepare men and women of faith, character and professional ability for positions of leadership throughout the world. Approximately 3,000 students are enrolled in the Marriott School’s graduate and undergraduate programs.