Samsung pickied up the Smartphone of year award at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona beating off the challenge of Apple and its iPhone, HTC Droid DNA, Nokia Lumia 920, and Samsung Galaxy Note II. It was one of four major awards for Samsung, compared with none for Apple.
The S2 beat the iPhone 4s at last year’s show.Samsung was device manufacturer of the year and Apple won the tablet category.
In the 2013 entry level/feature phone category Nokia’s Asha won out over three other Nokia phones and the Samsung C3312. Google’s Nexus 7 won the tablet race.
But it is the best smartphone award that carries most kudos. Samsung not only won that. They won best device manufacturer and best Best Mobile Enabled Consumer Electronics Device for the Galaxy camera, and Best Mobile Infrastructure for Smart LTE Networks (they also won the CTO Choice award for their LTE technology).
This rounds off a year in which Samsung has had to defend its reputation against copycat charges in the American courts. And it shows that outside of north America Samsung enjoys widespread admiration among its peers. It remains to be seen, however, whether the run will continue for Samsung with the S4, which seems to be hitting snags.
Below is the full list of the winners.
Best Mobile Health Product or Service
MIPsoft for BlindSquare
Best Mobile Education or Learning Product or Service
Mobilink for SMS Based Literacy program
Best Mobile Product or Service for Automotive
BMW i, MINI, Sixt and Vodafone Group for DriveNow Premium Car Sharing
Best NFC /Mobile Money Product or Service
Etisalat for Flous – The Etisalat Commerce Programme
Best Mobile Publishing Product or Service
Ver Se Innovation for NewsHunt
Best Mobile Innovation for ‘Smart Cities’
Streetline for Parker
Best Mobile Enabled Consumer Electronics Device
Samsung Electronics for Samsung GALAXY Camera
Best Enterprise Mobile Service
Mobilelron for Version 5 Complete Enterprise Persona
Best Consumer Mobile Service
Comviva for Mahindra Comviva’s mobiquity™ MFS platform powering mTicketing service for Bangladesh Railways
Best Advertising or Marketing on Mobile
McCann Worldgroup (Hong Kong) for Chok! Chok! Chok!
Best Network Product or Solution for Serving Customers
NTT DOCOMO for Hanashite Hon’yaku, world’s first automatic voice translation service
Best Product, Initiative or Service in Emerging Markets
Ericsson for Amazon Connection– a digital inclusion program in the Amazon
GSMA mWomen Best Mobile Product or Service for Women in Emerging Markets
Asiacell for Almas Line
Best Use of Mobile in Emergency or Humanitarian Situations
Vodafone Foundation for Vodafone Instant Network
The Green Mobile Award
Indus Towers for Green Sites Project
Best Mobile App for Consumers
Facebook
Best Mobile App for Enterprise
Evernote
Judges Choice – Best Overall Mobile App
Waze
Most Innovative Mobile App
McCann Worldgroup (Hong Kong) for Chok! Chok! Chok!
Smartphone Application Challenge
AT&T for Application Resource Optimizer (ARO)
Best Application using Network APIs
Bharti Airtel Limited for my airtel app
Best Smartphone
Samsung Galaxy S3
Best Feature phone or entry level phone
Nokia Asha 305
Device Manufacturer of the Year
Samsung
Best Mobile Tablet
Google and Asus for Nexus 7
Best Mobile Infrastructure
Samsung Electronics for Smart LTE Networks
Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough
Accuris Networks for AccuROAM Wi-Fi: Making Wi-Fi a carrier driven extension of GSM for Offload and Roaming
Best Cloud Based Technology for Mobile
Jasper Wireless cloud-based connected devices platform for machine-to-machine (M2M) and consumer electronics
Best Mobile Safeguard & Security Products and Services
AdaptiveMobile and Syniverse for Messaging Trust
Outstanding LTE Contribution
SK Telecom for 4G LTE with PETA Solution
Outstanding Overall Mobile Technology – The CTO’s choice
Samsung Electronics for Smart LTE Networks
Spectrum for Mobile Broadband Award
Government of New Zealand
Mobile for Development Award
U.S. Agency for International Development
m-Government Award
Government of Moldova
Additional reporting from Forbes and Global Mobile Awards
