Samsung Galaxy S3 Beats Apple IPhone To Smartphone of The Year Award

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