Winning team from UC Berkeley develops "smart"
grocery cart using recycled smartphones
Sprint [NYSE: S], in conjunction with Brightstar Corp. and HOBI
International, announced today the winner of its inaugural
Smartphone Encore Challenge, a contest for Net Impact college
students to find profitable and innovative ways to repurpose old
smartphones or their components.
The winning team from the University of California, Berkeley,
created TouchCart, a “smart” grocery cart that aims to transform
traditional shopping carts into multi-purpose shopping assistants,
providing savings for grocery stores and an improved shopping
experience for customers.
“We were impressed with the caliber of entries and the
innovative solutions these students put forth,” said Doug
Michelman, Sprint senior vice president of Corporate Relations. “We
envisioned the contest as a way to address the growing
environmental issue of electronic waste. The students were
encouraged to use their creativity and propose market-based
solutions to extend the life of mobile phones. These winning ideas
bring exciting possibilities to the table.”
Offering a cost-effective and creative solution for both grocery
stores’ bottom line and customers’ in-store experience, TouchCart
would provide shopping lists, a store catalog, a customer service
phone line, and scanning capabilities right from the shopping cart
so that customers can bypass long check-out lines. The system would
enable the store to track spending, overall customer experience and
use of coupons. It also would provide insight for store inventory
and sales forecasting.
“We are honored to have won the Sprint Smartphone Encore
Challenge,” said team leader Ken Chew, who is majoring in economics
and computer science at UC Berkeley. “Our six-person team wanted to
develop a concept that promotes environmental protection and
recycling. We’re excited about the opportunities for our TouchCart
system through this contest and where it might go from here.”
The winning team receives $5,000, which can be used toward
attending a Startup Weekend to help take their idea to the next
level. They also have the opportunity to strengthen their business
model through strategic guidance from Sprint, Brightstar or HOBI
executives.
Two teams were selected as runners-up in the challenge. The
first, a team of two MBA students led by Sreekanth Krishnakumar
from Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, converts
old smartphones into onboard monitoring devices for vehicles. The
StreetSmart device calculates automobile insurance premiums based
on individual driving behaviors, provides feedback and financial
incentives for users to adopt better driving practices, and serves
as a black box recorder that can be reviewed in case of
accidents.
The second runner-up is a team of three led by Biplab Deka, a
Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering from the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Their entry, Neo,
transforms pre-owned smartphones into affordable computers for
budding programmers. The device would help address the “digital
divide” by providing computer access to school-aged children who
otherwise would not be able to take advantage of programming
tools.
The competition was open to 25 teams. Submissions were judged on
how well teams defined the problem, market, solution, innovation,
value proposition and financial feasibility associated with their
business idea and on the delivery of their submission. See the
Contest Official Rules for more details. Each team was challenged
to develop a product concept, business pitch and an optional brief
video.
To narrow down the submissions and determine the winner and two
runners-up, the entries were evaluated by a variety of judges,
including Andrew Morlet, CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation;
Beth Comstock, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of
General Electric; Alisha Templeton, Sprint Accelerator program
manager for TechStars; and Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of
the Electronics Takeback Coalition. Ultimately, the TouchCart
solution proved to be the winning concept.
Sustainable Innovation at Sprint
The Smartphone Encore Challenge is a continued demonstration of
Sprint’s commitment to sustainable innovation and leadership in
corporate sustainability. For the fourth straight year, Sprint has
been recognized as having the best phone buyback and trade-in
program, Sprint Buyback, among all major U.S. carriers by Compass
Intelligence. Last year alone, Sprint put more than $250 million
back in customers’ pockets and bought back more than 3 million
phones. Of those phones collected, more than 80 percent were
remanufactured as certified pre-owned devices. To date, Sprint’s
phone trade-in programs have helped create more than $1 billion in
cost avoidance for the company by reusing most of the devices they
collected.
About Sprint
Sprint (NYSE: S) is a communications services company
that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to
the things they care about most. Sprint served nearly 56
million connections as of Dec. 31, 2014, and is widely recognized
for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies,
including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in
the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin
Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national
and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1
Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past four years.
You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or
www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.
About Brightstar
Brightstar is the world’s largest specialized wireless
distributor and a leading provider of diversified services focused
on enhancing the performance and results of the key participants in
the wireless device value chain: manufacturers, operators and
retailers. For more information, please visit
www.Brightstar.com
About HOBI International
HOBI International, Inc. is a leading asset management and
electronics recycling company serving Fortune 1000 clients. HOBI’s
IT services group focuses on corporate IT, data and
telecommunications infrastructure, providing resale and
re-marketing, data erasure and data destruction, recycling,
environmental and compliance reporting, de-installation services,
and logistics management. HOBI’s Mobile Device services group
focuses on the resale and recycling of cellular assets. Our client
list includes three of the four national wireless operators in the
U.S. and four major device OEMs, and many recycling partners that
trust us to maximize the value of their cellular assets while
protecting sensitive corporate or client data. An R2- and
ISO14001-certified firm, HOBI leads the electronics recycling
industry in best practices for recycling and commodities recovery.
Learn more at www.HOBI.com
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available:
http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20150427005091/en/
SprintMarci VerBrugge-Rhind,
913-794-6319Marci.j.verbrugge@sprint.com
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