Alex North and Daniel Danilatos took out the top prize at this year’s OzAPP Awards for their phone-to-phone communication device, Soundbyte.
The OzAPP Awards is a competition to identify Australia’s best mobile app concepts, with winners sharing a prize pool of over $300,000 worth of resources to build and launch their apps. North, a software engineer and Danilatos, who operates a software company, presented their idea along with four other finalists at the OzAPP Awards in Perth on February 18.
The duo’s winning concept, Soundbyte, uses high-frequency sound to send data between mobile devices. “On a small scale it can be used for peer-to-peer sharing,” said North. “But as the scales get bigger it can be used in retail to replace QR codes.”
While the prize will enable them to turn their idea into reality, North and Danilatos have no desire to move their operations from their current base in Sydney to Silicon Valley in the US. “Of course it’s great to travel over there, but Silicon Valley is more and more realising they can fund companies to stay in Australia, and still be successful,” said North.
The next step for the pair is to investigate commercial opportunities and decide which ones to pursue. After Soundbyte is launched, their future projects will be based on similar theme. “We love communication and collaboration and solving all the problems in that domain,” said Danilatos.
The OzAPP Awards aim to foster dialogue between innovators, researchers, investors and industry, and to stimulate innovative business culture around Australia. The judging panel includes a mix of investors, developers and entrepreneurs, and is chaired by Curtin University’s Innovator in Residence and Visiting Professor Bill Tai. Sponsors include Curtin University, Qualcomm Ventures, Optus and Bankwest.
Daniel Danilatos (left) and Alex North
