The Samsung Gear App Challenge is part of the series of "Samsung Smart App Challenges" which began in 2012.

For this year's contest you are asked to create apps developed with Samsung Gear Dev Tool and this tutorial video is provided to help you get started. It shows how to build "Hello Gear!", a sample Gear application, using the Tizen SDK for Wearable. It also teaches how to test the applications using the Emulator.

The first round of the contest ends on July 17th and the top 200 finalists, selected by a panel of judges, and each will receive $2,000 in cash and marketing and promotion support from Samsung.

These Round 1 winners will be invited to compete in Round 2 which runs from August 15 to September 30 for more prizes and promotional exposure. Devs are expected to use the additional time to improve and modify their apps. Judges will select the top 40 applications and those winners will receive a total of $850,000 in additional prize money distributed as follows:

Grand Prize   (1) $100,000

Second Prize (9) $50,000

Third Prize   (30) $10,000 

In addition to the cash prize, winners will also receive marketing and promotion support from Samsung and the top 10 winners will be invited to Samsungs’ major developer events.

There is also a Popular Choice Prize of a high-end car with an approximate retail value of US $50,000 chosen from among the top 10 apps by popular vote.

This worldwide contest is open to individuals and teams of individuals aged 13 or older (with parental consent where required) and to corporates. It is being organized under the auspices of Challenge Post, which means that the usual territorial restrictions apply. In other words you can't enter if you reside in the Province of Quebec, Italy, Brazil, Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar.