Israeli navigation application Waze was named the Best Overall Mobile App in the Global Mobile Awards competition, held as part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
Waze competed in the main category, Judges Choice – Best Overall Mobile App, against four of the world's most famous applications: The Dropbox file hosting service, the Flipboard technology news application, the Sky Sports F1 software and the Square electronic payment service.
Waze, the most popular free navigation software in Israel, is based on "the wisdom of crowds" – real-time traffic information received from users – in order to present drivers with the shortest way to the target and warn them of any hazards.
The application is a success abroad as well, with some 40 million users. According to recent reports, technology giant Apple held talks with Waze and looked into the option of buying the company.
"It's a great honor," said Waze CEO Noam Bardin after receiving the award. "We are proud to be in good company with the world's leading applications. The people responsible for the success are mostly our community of users, and we thank them."
Waze was not the only Israeli representative in the competition. Isracard's MyCheck for Cellpay application was nominated in the Best NFC/ Mobile Money Product or Service category.
Israeli uTest, a "marketplace for software testing services," was nominated in the Best Enterprise Mobile Service category.
Intucell, which develops mobile network management technologies and was recently sold to Cisco for $475 million, was nominated in the Best Mobile Infrastructure category for a special Self-Optimizing Network (SON) project it conducted with AT&T.
Samsung Galaxy S III won in the Best Smartphone category, beating Apple iPhone 5, HTC Droid DNA, Nokia Lumia 920 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
Google Nexus 7 was named Best Mobile Tablet, beating Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9, Apple iPad mini, Apple iPad (fourth-generation), Asus Transformer Infinity and Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
Some 1,500 companies from 205 countries are displaying their products at the MWC exhibition. Israel is represented this year by more than 100 companies – the fourth largest delegation to the event after the United States, the United Kingdom and France.