Harpoen recognized as global champion by WSA-Mobile

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Abu Dhabi, 6 February 2013

Last night in Abu Dhabi, a panel of mobile experts selected Indonesia’s Harpoen as the global champion in the category of mobile tourism and culture.

Harpoen joins seven other mobile applications from around the world as the eight global champions of this biannual event supported by the United Nations. The awards are implemented by Austria’s International Centre for New Media with the support of the government of Abu Dhabi. Harpoen is the first mobile application from Indonesia to be awarded champion.

Other champions include Hong Kong’s iButterfly in mobile commerce, Sweden’s RoadRoid in mobile government, Canada’s Project Noah in mobile education, and Brazil’s HandTalk in mobile empowerment.

Members of the jury selected Harpoen based on uniqueness of concept, execution, potential to reach a global audience, and commercial applicability. Jury members included several prominent CEOs and strategists in the global mobile industry, including Great Britain’s Ralph Simon ‘ widely considered a mobile visionary and the “father of the ring tone”; Canada’s Gary Schwartz ‘ a seasoned entrepreneur with over twenty years in mobile; Harri Koponen ‘ the COO of Rovio, makers of the Angry Birds phenomenon; and executives from SAP, Dolby, and the head of global research at Mobile Monday.

“We are incredibly fortunate to receive this level of global recognition by so many accomplished judges,” says Harpoen cofounder Agatha Simanjuntak-Ellis. “This recognition really validates what we have been doing, and where we plan on going.”

Harpoen beat out a mobile publishing platform for travel guides from Italy, a global taxi booking service from Estonia, an experiential application from Uganda, and a maker of mobile tourism guides from Austria with more than 3.5 million downloads to be crowned champion in its category.

Harpoen’s winning presentation showcased actual global use cases, with tens of thousands of users having left over fifty thousand messages and memories all over the world since the soft-launch of Harpoen 1.0 in Indonesia in March 2012.

Harpoen 2.0 was quietly released last week in Jakarta, and since then total downloads as well as activities inside of the application have increased tremendously.

Harpoen 2.0 for Android will be released in March 2013.

Media inquiries please contact: media@harpoen.com

http://harpoen.com