The Entertainment Apps to Look Out For at Pivot East

The Pivot East 2012 announcements will be made today. The winner will get an all expenses paid trip to Dubai to showcase their work at GITEX Technology Week at the Dubai International and Convention and Exhibition Center. GITEX focuses on technological advancements in the Middle East, South Asia and Northern Africa. Pitching has been going over the last two days at the Ole Sereni Hotel on Mombasa Road.

The competition has been divided into five categories, with a winner in each and the entrant with the highest overall score being the ultimate winner. The categories are Financial Services, Business and Resource Management, Entertainment, Mobile Society, Utilities.

The Entertainment category has TUBET (bet placing and claiming) by Squad Digital, Ma3racer (localized racing game) by Planet Rackus, Mingle (chat application) by Dotideas Technology, Run For Afrika (pan-African racing game) by Run For Africa and Tough Jungle (jungle adventure game) by Elan Telemedia.

Most of the finalists in this category were gaming applications, with the most interesting being the Ma3racer, mostly because it has been localized. That might be its selling point. A chat application needs a serious marketing campaign before it gains any ground and even with that, it would need a unique feature to set it from the rest. For example, it would probably have to work on every platform, unlike WhatsApp. Squad Digital’s TUBET seems to be the strongest contender in this category not only because it’s unique in this market, but because it has a clear revenue stream.

The event is sponsored by Samsung, infoDEV, Omidyar Network with Nokia, InMobi, Facebook, Google, Safaricom, Mercy Corps, Zuku and Capital FM.