Mobile Startups Whittled Down To The Last Five in Barcelona

by editor on Feb.16, 2009, under TechCrunch

The Mobile Peer Awards in Barcelona – running alongside Mobile Word Congress – are wrapping up here in Barcelona and they’ve announced the winners. What they hell does this matter? Well, about 163 mobile startups entered, 42 got selected and only 20 got to present. That’s been whittled down to just five winners. Which are…

Babajob – From Bangalore, India, this 12-person startup connects informal sector workers – cooks, maids, drivers, guards, etc.- and employers in India. That’s one big market, right?

Orbster – Orbster is a developer of location-based entertainment like games, and has a publishing platform for third party location-based services. Their main product is GPS Mission, a platform for user-generated GPS games like scavenger hunts, historical timetravels, crime and mystery stories and guides. Users have already created GPS games in about 60 countries since launch in May 2008. GPS Mission was – apparently – the first worldwide playable GPS game for the iPhone.

Unkasoft Advergaming – Unkasoft, Spanish company, is an in-games advertising company aiming at Mobile.

Fring – We know all about them.

The final award went to a rather astounding idea.

PopCatcher Is a Stockholm, Sweden startup with a slightly mad piece of software. Their software records FM radio from the cell’s internal radio, separates the commercials and chat out from the songs and saves the songs on the handset as an MP3. Good luck with that guys…

The rest of the 42 and the final 20 are listed here and here.

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