Tizen is the latest in-development mobile operating system to be in desperate need of apps and, to tempt developers to stock its brand new store, The Linux Foundation, Intel and Samsung have together announced the Tizen App Challenge with around $4 million in prizes.

Tizen is the open-source operating system that was left over after MeeGo collapsed. It can be used on devices including smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs, and consists of a Linux kernel and WebKit runtime - i.e. it is another browser based OS like Firefox OS or Chrome. 

The Tizen project resides within the Linux Foundation and it has an impressive line up of industry supporters who are members of the Tizen Association.

Participating in the context is a three-stage process. Sign up to create the relevant Tizen Developer and Tizen Store Seller accounts; submit an app and be notified when it has passed certification; register as many certified apps as you like in the contest before November 1, 2013.

The competition is open to those who are resident in the following list of countries and who have reached the age of majority there:

• Australia, Belgium, Canada (excluding Quebec), China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, japan, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia,  Singapore, Slovakia, Thailand, United Kingdom, Ukraine, United States, and Vietnam.

Entries can be made by individuals, teams of individuals and (with the exception of Russia) on behalf of an employer.

A total of 54 prizes will be awarded over nine categories. For the Game Categories:

• Action, Adventure, Arcade, Sports
• Role Playing, Strategy
• Board, Card/Casino, Puzzle, Word/Trivia, Music, Others

the Grand Prize is $200,000, two Runner Ups will each win  $100,000  and three Honorable Mention prizes are $40,000 each.

The six Non-Game Categories are:

• Productivity, Finance, Utilities
• Education, Reference, Kids
• Music/Video, Entertainment, Photo, Font
• News/Magazine, Sports, Weather
• Social Networking
• Lifestyle, Health, Travel, Navigation

In each of these the Grand Prize is $120,000,  the two Runner Ups prizes are $60,000  and the three Honorable Mention prizes are $30,000.

In addition, the top 10 ranked HTML5 apps will be eligible for an additional $50,000 prize!

As yet no Tizen devices have even been announced, but the 2.1 version of the SDK can be downloaded from Tizen Developers and the 2..2 beta is also available.

In Appcelerator's most recent survey of mobile developers, only 5% of developers expressed an interest in developing for Tizen, putting it firmly at the bottom of league. So hopefully this competition will persuade more devs to take notice, especially at being a standards-based platform existing HTML5 apps should be easily ported to it