Interior design and decorating resource Houzz is the overall best Android app of the year, according to Google, which announced the results of the first-ever Google Play Awards at its developer conference, Google I/O. While in previous years, the company had rounded up large numbers of apps for “Best of” lists, the new Google Play Awards instead follows Apple’s model of selecting winners across a variety of categories.

 

But where Apple chooses best apps for phone, tablet, and watch, along with selections like “most innovative,” Google took a somewhat different path. It selected 5 nominees across 10 categories, and didn’t differentiate between those built for tablet or phone.

Google also nominated apps that reflected a group of developers who were taking the best advantage of Google’s services, like “Best Use of Google Play Game Services,” plus those who did the best job of implementing Google’s newer design language, Material Design.

And Google didn’t limit itself to only one category focused on innovation, but chose several angles – including not only the “most innovative” app, but also “Standout Startup” and “Early Adopter. The move was likely meant to signal that not all of the best and most creative new apps are exclusive to iOS, or launched on iOS first.

The company live-streamed the ceremony this evening from Google I/O, which was also a change from previous years.

On stage, the company spoke of Google Play’s evolution and noted that the online storefront now reaches over a billion users daily. Apps are obviously a huge draw for this store – earlier this week, Google said that app installs from Google Play had reached 65 billion in the past year.

The winning apps were chosen by a panel of experts at Google, and rated on several factors, including app quality and innovation. To be considered, the apps either needed to have launched or had a major update over the last 12 months.

Houzz ended up winning the “Best App” title, beating out BuzzFeed News, Colorfy, TuneIn Radio and Yummly.

Meanwhile, the hugely popular Clash Royale walked away with the “Best Game” crown, topping Alphabear, Clash of Kings, MARVEL Future Fight, and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.

From the startup world, the smart airfare prediction engine Hopper won “Best Standout Startup” and millennial-focused investing app Robinhood grabbed the win for “Best Use of Material Design.”

New Delhi, March 18, 2016: - Securing its position as a leading smartphone developer and manufacturer, ZOPO Mobiles was recently felicitated with the award for best Upcoming Brand of China, as well as Best affordable Premium handset award for their Speed 7 model, at the recently concluded 2nd Mobility Excellence Awards Night 2015. The award was presented to ZOPO for developing highly functional and affordable smartphones that cater to the needs of every customer. The award ceremony was held on 4th march, 2016.

Conveying his gratitude and delight over the win, Sanjeev Bhatia, Founder & Chairman, ADCOM (Partners for ZOPO in India), said, “We at ZOPO Mobiles are thrilled and are absolutely humbled by this acknowledgement.Bagging this prestigious award for our work, adds to our resolve of making our brand more successful by continuing to develop smartphones, which will cater to our customers from all walks of life. I would like to take this opportunity to thank ZOPO’s hard working team for their significant contribution in making this brand a success and we will strive to keep innovating further for our valued patrons.”

ZOPO mobile has been instrumental in developing quality smartphones catering to different needs of their customers. Their Speed series, which includes the award-winning Speed & model, has garnered lot of success and greater market value among their customers. Other series of ZOPO is the Flash series which offers mid-range smartphone models for their urban audience, and their budget friendly Color series which was developed for young adults.


About ZOPO

Shenzhen ZOPO Communication Equipment Co., Ltd., headquartered in Shenzhen (P.R.C.) and established in 2008, is a hi-tech enterprise engaged in the design, manufacture and marketing of mobile intelligent terminal products.


With clients spread across 135 countries, ZOPO is an internationalized enterprise in the communications industry, with a design team in Europe, and sales location teams in Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East and South America.


ZOPO Europe Operations Center has been established on April 1st 2015 to support the marketing and after-sales service in the European market. Currently ZOPO is engaged in three main product lines: Speed, Flash and Color series.      

 

Bangalore, March 16, 2016: EMC India Center of Excellence (COE) today announced that it has won the prestigious NASSCOM Diversity &Inclusion (D&I) award at the Diversity and Inclusion Summit organized by NASSCOM today in Bangalore. The company won the award in the ‘Most Innovative Program’ category for its ‘Redefine Abilities’ program, an industry-first initiative that aims to mainstream disability at the workplace.


NASSCOM encourages, recognizes and honors IT-BPM organizations that have adopted and implemented policies, practices to promote inclusion. The focus for this year’s awards were how to strengthen practices and make them sustainable, get a perspective on the new emerging trends in India as well as a global view point.


EMC views diversity and inclusion as a business imperative and is committed to enabling an environment for people with diverse talents. The company’s efforts go well beyond promoting gender diversity to also mainstreaming disability in the workplace. Through various practices and programs, India COE has been sensitizing employees about inclusivity at workplace and in society, as well as creating opportunities to channelize diversity for success.


‘Redefine Abilities’ is a first-of-its-kind internship project in India for persons with profound disabilities. The program aims to empower persons with profound disabilities, take them one step closer to their career path and make them financially independent.


Receiving this prestigious award, Debashish Patnaik, Senior Director, HR, EMC India COE said, ““The NASSCOM D&I award is a testament of our commitment to creating a truly diverse and inclusive company. As one of the frontrunners in mainstreaming disability at the workplace we have designed the right infrastructure and ecosystem including assistive technologies for our employees with severe/multiple disabilities to help them advance in their careers and create an effective inclusion culture. This program has brought to the fore several success stories of differently abled employees in our company excelling in their work.”

With an objective to encourage a more diverse and inclusive workforce, EMC India established the India Chapter of Disability Empowerment Resource Group (DERG) in 2012. Driven by EMC’s employees, the objective of DERG is to assist EMC employees and their families by promoting awareness and understanding of disabilities. Through this initiative, EMC has tripled the number of disability hires over the past three years. DERG organizes various programs to encourage and empower the differently abled employee sat EMC and also to recognize the contribution they have made and to showcase their achievements.


The India Network of DERG has been successful in creating an increasingly inclusive environment within the organization by sensitizing teams and enabling them to adapt to working with differently abled professionals.


ABOUT EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.