SEOUL, South Korea and ESPOO, Finland – The best way to cater to the market should be to simply ask the market what it wants. Based on this, mobile phone giants Nokia and LG have asked the community for ideas, while LG took this a bit further and is offering US$80 000 in prizes for the best concept.

On its corporate blog, Nokia Conversations, the Finnish manufacturer has set seven categories for mobile phone components. For each, voters will have a week to select their favourite hardware combinations, although the system limits them to “reasonable” features, not allowing full high-end specifications. Currently, only display and user interface are available for voting, but from the 22nd of March onwards, the following categories will open, with a week’s interval: size and shape, materials, operating system (Symbian or MeeGo), connectivity, camera, and enhancements.

From the voting above, Nokia will get its design team to come up with concept sketches, which will also be up for voting. Unfortunately for enthusiasts, the complete set of ideas from the campaign Design by Community will not be turned into a product, but just a concept, although we are sure Nokia will use it as contribution for its market research.

For LG, this is the third annual design competition. With the partnership between crowdSPRING and Autodesk, the manufacturer will offer prizes in cash and software valued up to US$80 000. The competition is limited to US residents, who simply have to design a concept of the “next-revolutionary” mobile phone. LG’s Design the Future ends on 26th April this year.

For the first prize, LG and sponsors will offer US$20 000 in cash, one Wacom Intuos4 medium tablet, and a licence of the Autodesk industrial design software. LG will take ownership of every idea posed to the manufacturer, because this, of course, does not only require a hardware design, but a full-blown concept – the judges will follow a strict criteria which sets creativity/originality at 40%, need-fulfilment at 30% and feasibility at 30% as well.

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LG, Nokia Ask Users for Design Ideas