IBM’s ‘cognitive computing’ challenge to mobile developers

• Challenge to spur innovation and accelerate mobile apps on Watson
• ‘Watson in the palm of your hand is a game-changing proposition,’ IBM says

IBM has launched the IBM Watson (www.ibmwatson.com) Mobile Developer Challenge, a global competition to encourage developers to create mobile consumer and business apps powered by Watson.

The programme, being driven by the newly formed IBM Watson Group, aims to encourage developers to spread cognitive computing apps into the marketplace, the company said in a statement.
 
IBM's Watson cognitive computing innovation represents a new class of services, software and apps that analyse, improve by learning, and discover answers and insights to complex questions from massive amounts of disparate data, it claimed.

"The power of Watson in the palm of your hand is a game-changing proposition, so we're calling on mobile developers around the world to start building cognitive computing apps infused with Watson's intelligence,” said Mike Rhodin (pic), senior vice president of the IBM Watson Group.
 
“Imagine a new class of apps that deliver deep insights to consumers and business users instantly -- wherever they are -- over the cloud. It's about changing the essence of decision-making from 'information at your fingertips' to actual 'insights’,” he added.

Today, it's second nature for people to simply tap an app to stay connected, make a purchase or manage a bank account, IBM said.
 
The IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge will encourage developers around the world to build sophisticated cognitive apps that can change the way consumers and businesses interact with data on their mobile devices.
 
Through this initiative, mobile developers can take advantage of Watson’s ability to understand the complexities of human language, ‘read’ millions of pages of data in seconds and improve its own performance by learning.

Over the next three months, the global challenge invites mobile developers and entrepreneurs to share their best ideas to build and develop mobile apps into prototypes.
 
Three winners will join the Watson Ecosystem Programme. The winners will work with IBM's recently launched global consulting practice, IBM Interactive Experience to receive design consulting and support from IBM experts to develop a viable commercial app.

The IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge is part of the IBM MobileFirst strategy to help businesses of all sizes adopt mobile technology to better engage with customers and extend their businesses to new markets, the company said.
 
The news also represents the latest milestone in the newly formed IBM Watson Group to fuel an ecosystem of developers, startups, tech companies and venture capitalists building Watson-powered apps as part of the Watson Developers Cloud, it added.
 
To date, more than 1,500 individuals and organisations have contacted IBM to share their ideas for creating cognitive computing applications that redefine how businesses and consumers make decisions. In fact, global developers have created and plan to go to market in 2014 with Watson apps across a variety of industries, IBM claimed.

Using natural language processing and analytics, Watson processes information akin to how people think, representing a major shift in an organisation’s ability to quickly analyse, understand and respond to big data.
 
Named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Watson was developed in IBM’s Research labs and is now being accelerated into market by the new IBM Watson Group.
 
As part of the group, IBM is investing US$1 billion to introduce a new class of cognitive computing services, software and apps, and investing US$100 million to spur innovation for software application providers to develop a new generation of Watson powered solutions.
 
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