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WirelessDevNet.com Press Release
Ilja Laurs, the European Manager of the Year 2011
June 10 2011- Athens, Greece - The European Business Press (EBP) presented the "European Manager of the Year 2011 Award" to Ilja Laurs, the CEO of GetJar, at its General Assembly in Athens, last night.
The award is based on a vote of the EBP members, among them publications such as the "Financial Times", "The Wall Street Journal Europe", "Handelsblatt", "Les Echos", or "Milano Finanza". EBP was founded in Como, Italy, in 1962. Today the organisation counts 52 leading European business newspapers and magazines in 27 countries.
In 1991, EBP began presenting the award to top European managers and companies. Among the recipients were personalities such as Ingvar Kamprad of Ikea, Jorma Ollila of Nokia, Bernd Pischetsrieder, former CEO of BMW and Volkswagen, Wendelin Wiedeking, CEO of Porsche and Wolfgang Mayrhuber, the Chairman of Lufthansa.
Ilja Laurs received this highest award granted by European business journalists for his outstanding work in developing his own company GetJar to become the world’s largest open mobile application store with a leading position among the top 5 mobile app store operators, playing in the same field as giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nokia. Recognized as an industry leader, Ilja speaks at all major telecommunication conferences and is regularly quoted in the BBC, Forbes, The New York Times, USA Today and other media. GetJar was selected as a 2011 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Ilja was featured in Time Magazine with GetJar as one of "10 start-ups that will change your life."
Since 2005, GetJar provides global distribution and monetisation services to 350,000 developers, from one-man shops to established brands like Google, Microsoft and Facebook. As of August 2009, GetJar has 50,000 games and apps and serves more than 75,000 mobile applications downloads per month across all major handsets and platforms to consumers in more than 200 countries through its own site and network of OEM and carrier partners that include Vodafone, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry and others.
Born in 1976 in Lithuania, and attended school at a time when the country was part of the Soviet Union, Ilja enrolled in an American student exchange program and graduated from Jackson High School in Ohio in 1994. He came back to Lithuania to attend Vilnius University where he studied Economics, paying his education by teaching schoolchildren English. Since 1999 Ilja has launched over 20 successful projects, as diverse as Lithuania’s largest hotel reservation system LithuanianHotels.com, mobile payments system MicroPay.lt and mobile games studio Gaxo Interactive. Fluent in Lithuanian, Russian and English, Ilja has a keen interest in basketball, tennis, chess and watches and enjoys traveling.
Upon receiving the award, Ilja Laurs commented: “If somebody tried to tax every website 30% of the revenue just for their website being allowed to exist, this would cause a real revolution on the Internet. But this is exactly how closed app stores operate. We believe the app space has to be open, neutral and tax-free just like the Web. Our open platform lives by these principles.”
About GetJar
GetJar is the world’s largest open app store with over 1.5 billion downloads to date. The company’s key point of difference is its open market approach, which allows it to deliver applications for both feature phones and smartphones across all major platforms. The company provides more than 75,000 mobile applications to consumers in more than 200 countries. GetJar is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in the UK and Lithuania. For more information: www.getjar.com and follow us on Twitter@getjar
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