Irish start-up FoneSense has won a global mobile app competition, coming in first place at the Fiware

smart business competition.

The team came joint first with Brazilian start-up FI-Guardian, picking up a cash prize of €25,000.

"We didn't think we had a hope in hell so we were shocked to win. We were competing against the best of the best," FoneSense founder and CEO Christian Ryder said.

FoneSense offers companies the opportunity to specifically target a select user base with branded jingles. Once a user has selected a tone, their phone will become a micro broadcasting device with the branded jingle playing every time the phone rings. Mobile phone users will then receive a reward. “For example you could select the ‘Coca-Cola Holidays are Coming’ jingle as your mobile ringtone. Every time your phone rings, you will get paid,” Mr Ryder said.

The start-up has more than 1,200 people signed up in Ireland and has just signed an agreement in Japan.

A team from IT Carlow, who developed My People Care – a secure cloud-based service that allows users to keep track of their medical information on a smartphone – finished second in the Fiware Smart Society competition.

The My People Care team was made up of IT Carlow lecturer in software development Dr Chris Meudec, and software development graduates Dominik Chomic and Robbie Lynch. They were awarded with a cash prize of €40,000.

Fiware is the European Union’s future internet cloud project. Its main aim is to propose an open way and an open architecture for the development of cloud technologies in the EU.