M-KOPA III Solar Home System has been awarded the Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets award at the ended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The product made by M-KOPA Solar and targeted at low-income households and those located in areas that are not connected to the national grid in East Africa had connected over 250,000 homes in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania by September last year.
Vodafone’s mobile money transfer and payments service M-PESA was also feted for the strides made in the Indian market. It emerged as the best mobile payments solution. M-PESA is a previous winner of the award for the financial revolution it brought in Kenya where it premiered through network operator Safaricom.
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone was voted the best smartphone of 2015 while Xiaomi’s Redmi 2 emerged the best low-cost smartphone. Apple’s iPhone 6 and LG’s G3 won in the best smartphone category in last year’s awards while Motorola’s Moto E took home the award for the best low-cost smartphone for the year 2014. The Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch was picked as the best-connected consumer electronic device of the year gone by. As was the case last year, Microsoft won again as its Surface Pro 4 tablet beat everyone to be crowned the best mobile tablet of 2015.
Other winners of this year’s GSMA Global Mobile (Glomo) Awards include music application SoundCloud and Google’s low-cost virtual reality kit Google Cardboard.
Here is a full list of the winners:
Best Mobile Innovation for Health
Etisalat for Etisalat “Drones for Good”
Best Mobile Innovation for Education
Worldreader and Opera for Worldreader Mobile
Best Mobile Innovation for Automotive
Anagog for Crowdsourced Parking Technology
Best Mobile Payment Solution
Vodafone India for Vodafone M-Pesa Ltd
Best Use of Mobile for Retail, Brands & Commerce
Point Inside for StoreMode™
Best Use of Mobile for Travel, Leisure & Hospitality
SapientNitro for Lufthansa Apple Watch App
Mobile Connect Award for Authentication & Identity
Orange Spain, Telefonica and Vodafone Spain for Mobile Connect
Best Mobile Innovation for ‘The Internet of Things’
SIGFOX – A Global IoT communication service provider
Outstanding Innovation for the Connected Life
Etisalat for Etisalat “Drones for Good”
Orange Spain, Telefonica and Vodafone Spain for Mobile Connect
Best Mobile Service or App for Enterprise
KPN and Accenture for Connected Workers
Best Use of Mobile for Advertising or Marketing
Opera Mediaworks, Mindshare and Wanda Digital for Rexona
Best Mobile Cloud Service or App
InnoQuant for MOCA Platform
Best Mobile Network Solution for Serving Customers
Dialog Axiata PLC for Self-Care Application Framework
Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets
M-KOPA III Solar Home System for M-KOPA Solar
Best Mobile Service for Women in Emerging Markets
Vodafone Telekomunikasyon for Vodafone Kırmızı Işık (Easy Rescue)
Mobile in Emergency or Humanitarian Situations
Flowminder, Ncell and TeliaSonera for Aid the displaced post Nepal earthquake
Best Use of Mobile for Accessibility & Inclusion
Turkcell for Turkcell My Dream Companion Mobile Audio Description
The Green Mobile Award
Telefónica for Telefónica Global Energy Efficiency Programme 2010-2020
Best Mobile Music App
SoundCloud for SoundCloud App
Best Mobile Game
Super Evil Megacorp for Vainglory
Best Mobile App Media, Film, TV or Video
Quickplay for HOOQ app
Best Mobile App for Social and Lifestyle
Turkcell for Turkcell Healthmetre
Most Innovative Mobile App
L’Oréal Paris Worldwide for Makeup Genius
Best Overall Mobile App (Judge’s Choice)
Google Cardboard
Best Smartphone 2015
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge
Best Low-Cost Smartphone (Sub $100)
Xiaomi Redmi 2
Best Mobile Tablet
Microsoft Surface Pro 4
Best Wearable Mobile Technology
Well Being Digital Ltd for ActivHearts
Best Connected Consumer Electronic Device
Samsung for Samsung Gear S2
Best Mobile Infrastructure
Ericsson for Ericsson Radio System
Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough
ZTE for Pre5G Massive MIMO base station
Best Technology Enabler
Accedian and SK Telecom for QoE-Aware SDN Control
Best Solution for Growing Smaller or Independent Networks
Athonet for Athonet Software Broadband Mobile Core Solution
Best Mobile Security or Anti-Fraud Solution
Trustonic for Trustonic Secured Platform
Broadband for All: Outstanding LTE Contribution
Accenture, Oi and TIM Brasil for RAN Sharing
Outstanding Overall Mobile Technology – The CTOs’ Choice
ZTE for Pre5G Massive MIMO base station
Government Leadership Award
The Federal Government of the United Mexican States
Spectrum for Mobile Broadband Award
The Government of the Republic of Colombia
Chairman’s Award
Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Vodafone for outstanding achievement in support of the GSMA’s Mobile Connect Initiative
Connected Women Leadership in the Industry
Roshan
You can check our coverage of previous winners of the awards from past years here, here and here.
Photo: M-KOPA
