Portugese app developer Pedro Campos has taken the top prize of  €75,000 (£64,000) as the winner of the 2010 Vodafone AppStar competition. The prize adds to the €25,000 local prize he picked up from the first round of the competition, for his app, FlickrShow.

Beating off competition from seven other country winners, FlickrShow was awarded the top prize for its innovation and the great user experience it offers. FlickrShow accesses Flickr in an new way, offering “stunning” slide shows and allowing users to search photos by keyword, username, colour and location, using the phone’s GPS system.

Campos, aged 26, only took up mobile app development nine months ago. Based in Porto, Portugal, he is planning on using his winnings to invest in a local Portuguese web development company, to expand its mobile section.  He says: “Winning the final stage of the Vodafone App Star competition is brilliant news. I made sure my app was not only easy to use but could help people in their everyday lives, and it’s great to see that it’s been so well received by customers across Europe. Competitions like this really give developers a chance to shine, and I’m grateful to the team at Vodafone for all their support. I’m looking forward to developing more apps for Vodafone 360 in the future.”

Second place in the competition was awarded to a group of Italian students from Politecnico  di Milano, for their travel app, ‘Cool Traveling’. Raffaele Bisogno, Marco Cavone, Tommaso De Pace and Stefano Francavilla, who are currently studying for a Masters in Computer Science, will now receive a further €25,000, taking their total prize winnings from the Vodafone AppStar competition to €50,000. Cool Traveling enables users to plan a trip around Italy in a simple and cost effective way, providing information on a range of travel services such as train and plane tickets, weather forecasts and accommodation guides. 

“Customers have an insatiable appetite for mobile apps, so it made sense to give them the chance to judge for themselves who our winner should be,” says Lee Epting, director of content services at Vodafone. “It’s clear from the hard work and effort of our finalists that there is a lot of talent out there and it’s great to be able to reward the best of the best, while demonstrating our own commitment to supporting the developer community.”

There’s more information about Flickrshow here. 
And more information about developing for Vodafone here.