20,000 Euros Is Top Prize in IoT App Developers Competition

The Application Developers Alliance launched “IoT{Accelerate}Berlin,” an Internet of Things competition for developers and prelaunch startups, the alliance said Monday. Organized with funding from Ericsson and Google, the project “aims to spur innovation in this rapidly growing market,” the alliance said. "IoT is experiencing substantial growth, and the opportunity for European developers and startups to help shape its future is clear.” From "connected cars and homes to health, wearables, or big data solutions, the competition will help developers conceptualize and produce innovative products for this growing market," alliance Executive Director Jake Ward said. The alliance estimates the global population of connected devices will reach 50 billion units by 2020, and so “the incentives for developers to tackle the challenges emerging from IoT are substantive,” it said. App development “is a fundamental part of the networked society enabling superior consumer experience and driving network utilization,” it said. The winner of the competition stands to land 20,000 euros (about $22,500) in prize money, it said. The competition is so named because it will center around a three-day IoT workshop March 27-29 in Berlin, it said.