Nokia has announced the winners in the first Open C Challenge, a global contest for S60 mobile application development on Symbian OS smartphones, which it launched in July.

Sponsored by Forum Nokia, in conjunction with Orange and the Symbian Developer Network, the Open C Challenge invited developer entrants to submit open source applications built for mobile or desktop environments and ported to S60 on Symbian OS, or Native Symbian C++ applications developed in the Open C environment.

"The developers participating in the global Open C Challenge have shown remarkable creativity and innovation in the use of Nokia's Open C environment to develop applications for the leading smartphone platform in the market today," said Lee Epting, vice president of Forum Nokia.

"By providing a bridge by which existing mobile or desktop applications can easily move to S60, while easing development in native Symbian C++ for the S60 platform, the Open C environment helps developers address real business opportunities for high-value mobile applications in the rapidly expanding smartphone market worldwide."

The Open C Challenge grand prize winner was Sittiphol Phanvilai from Bangkok, Thailand for his MobiTubia application, receiving a cash prize of $10,000.

MobiTubia is a Flash Lite video (flv) player and YouTube portal application with real-time decoding for the S60 platform. The application allows users to browse and search for specific content on YouTube, as well as access flv clips using several different methods.

First runner-up winner Pu Zhihua, of Shanghai, China, won $5,000 for his application LiveTraffic, traffic assistance software that provides real-time traffic volumes.

Live Traffic adopts Floating Car Data technology to acquire road traffic information anywhere anytime, and publish mapped traffic information to Nokia phone users via GPRS or EDGE connections.

Second runner-up was a virtual multimedia courseware application, dubbed MobiClass. Netting the $3,000 prize was a team led by Tong Ren, also hailing from Shanghai.

The program is designed to deliver an integrated learning experience with active notes and video playback, with courseware downloaded to the device memory card for playback.

Third runner up was Steve DeLaney from Carlsbad, California, whose ViewRight application won him the $2,000 prize.

The streaming mobile video application enables users to watch television from their mobile devices. The application includes mobile video wireless download UI, proxy streaming, client and crypto middleware for Symbian 3G DVB-H H.264 platforms.

In addition to the cash prizes, all the winners receive a free year's membership in the Forum Nokia PRO developer programme, free Symbian Signing for their winning application and additional Nokia marketing and business support.