February 2007 – Barcelona, Spain, 15th February 2007 – Sri Lanka’s innovative software developer Microimage became a finalist and received a commendation from the GSM Association at the GSM global mobile awards in Barcelona, Spain.
Microimage who won the GSMA Asia mobile innovation award last year got short-listed for this prestigious global award together with another 5 entries from the USA and France. Microimage was the only company from an emerging market to get short-listed for the innovation forum and the awards. The company presented its innovative products for emerging market localization at the GSM mobile innovation forum at the 3GSM congress in front of a mammoth audience filled with mobile operators, venture capitalists, technology partners and other industry giants. This event was sponsored by Ericsson. At the innovation forum, judges selected Microimage as one of the three finalists to be present at the gala awards night which took place at the National Palace in Barcelona, Spain.
Microimage received commendation from the judges at this prestigious award ceremony which is referred to as the “Mobile Oscars”. The CEO of GSM Association Rob Conway said “The 2007 Awards attracted the greatest number of entries in the 12-year history of the competition, and to be recognized for excellence at this level is an achievement of which you can be justifiably proud. My congratulations on behalf of the GSMA – we wish you every continued success.”
Microimage was the only company to showcase innovations for emerging markets at the innovation forum. Harsha Purasinghe CEO, of Microimage who represented the event as a speaker said “It was one of the greatest moments for the entire ICT industry of Sri Lanka as we put Sri Lanka in the GSM innovation map”. “It was an excellent opportunity to present what young companies from emerging markets can do in terms of innovation in this space competing with global players who are backed by many top level venture capitalists and business partners” he further stated.
Damindu Jayaweera, Head of Strategy at Microimage said “The biggest win was to be recognized alongside other highly visible mobile revolutionaries, which essentially paves the way for Sri Lankan innovations to be taken beyond our own borders. Taking the next billion people on board the mobile revolution is the hot topic for this year’s 3GSM congress. We are glad that innovations for that next wave should come from the emerging market itself.” This recognition at a global event has put Sri Lanka on the map as a centre of ICT innovation.
Microimage developed the world’s first patented local language messaging and content browsing application to provide customized, local language support for entry-level applications on mobile devices in emerging markets. Some of the key strengths are highly user-friendly key-input and advanced rendering mechanisms for complex scripts which are also used for content browsing applications supporting different screen sizes in handsets. The applications are already available for many emerging market scripts which include Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, Thaana, Sinhala etc.
Incorporated in 1995, Microimage is a leading technology innovator and enterprise solution provider based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Microimage focus areas are enterprise software applications for Human Resources & Radio Automation and innovative mobile applications & solutions. The company pioneered mobile localization applications for emerging markets. The products are launched in the Indian sub-continent with operators such as Airtel – India, Dialog Telkom Sri Lanka, Tigo-Sri Lanka & Dhiraagu Telecom of Maldives. Microimage has won both local & international awards for its innovative software developments throughout the past years. For more information on Microimage mobile products & solutions for emerging markets visit www.mimobimedia.com.
