With India poised to become a leader in application development, Sony Ericsson today launched its Developer World programme in India to engage third party mobile developers to design content and applications.

"The programme will have six winners who will be mentored for 100 days by Sony Ericsson and provided all the tools for development of innovative content and applications. They will be free after that to give the content to us or pursue own interests," Sony Ericsson Head (Developer World) Jens Greve told PTI.

The programme currently runs in the US and China but has members from over 200 countries, he added.

The winners would become Sony Ericsson Certified Developer after the grooming programme. There will be two award categories, Best Application and Best Application Idea, submissions for which will be open for 45 days from today.

As India is the fastest growing telecom market, the company is looking at sourcing content developed here.

"The developers here would have a better idea about what are the needs of the people here. We expect the number of developers from India to be the largest by June next year," Greve added.

The current mobile value-added services market (as of June 2008) stood at Rs 5,780 crore and is estimated to grow by 70 per cent over the next two years to touch Rs 16,520 crore by June 2010.

Source:Asia Pulse