Unlike many industries that experienced a sharp decline in performance during 2014, Ukraine’s informational technology industry, worth $5 billion, managed to largely persevere through political and economic turmoil.
This led the Kyiv Post editorial to recognizing the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps. The top five were shortlisted due to reader feedback, as well as industry experts’ choice. On Sept. 19, at the Kyiv Post 20th Anniversary Charity Gala, the winners of the category were announced on the stage.
Mohammad Zahoor, the publisher of the Kyiv Post, also announced the release of the Kyiv Post’s own app that can be now downloaded for free on Google Play app store. It aggregates the articles in news, business, politics and other key categories, listing the latest ones at the top of the feed. The app is coming to the Apple’s App Store next week.
Calendars 5
For being an easy to use calendar and a task manager with over four million downloads globally, Calendars 5 app, developed by Odesa-based Readdle, was awarded the name of one of the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps.
Calendars 5 serves as a powerful personal assistant. It lets one manage time, meetings, events and tasks. It can sync with any other calendars on the phone, including Google Calendar, as well as Reminders. This way all tasks and events are in a single app.
Listen
Listen, a brainchild of Kyiv-based software developer MacPaw, was also awarded a name of one of the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps.
As a media player, Listen has a great interface, easy navigation and the ability to make one’s experience with listening to the favorite audio files on iPhone fun and comfortable. It’s not a common product for the company that usually develops software for disk cleaning, files encryption and secure storage. However, the app already gained almost 800,000 downloads globally.
Looksery
Odesa-developed Looksery was also awarded a name of one of the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps for its unique real time face modification technology.
Having gained more than 10 million downloads globally since its launch less than a year ago, Looksery app allowed one get special face effects right through the front facing camera on the phone in real-time. Last week brought the news that Looksery’s technology has been acquired by the American Snapchat for $150 million.
Privat24
For being truly national app that is used widely by Ukrainians and has reached over three million downloads Privat24, mobile banking app developed by Ukraine’s leader bank, Privat, was awarded a name of one of the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps too.
The app makes banking experience easy. One can check up on the currency rate, refill phone balance or transfer money to any bank account right on their phone as long as it’s connected to the Internet.
Vox
For most users of Apple gadgets, iTunes, the pre-installed Apple media player, is the obvious go-to application for listening to music. Vox media player for iPhone is Ukrainian alternative of iTunes and the Vox app, developed by Kyiv-based Coppertino, was awarded a name of one of the Best Ukraine-produced Mobile Apps
Having over 1,000 downloads per day, Vox serves to be the best pick for all music lovers who want a high-quality playback of all types of audio formats. The app lets one listen to lossless audio files, which promises outstanding quality of sound in the headphones.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bozhena Sheremeta can be reached at [email protected]. The Kyiv Post’s IT coverage is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum , FISON and SoftServe.
