Softonic Company blog

The results are in! After a month and a half of ongoing voting from users worldwide, we can finally announce the winners of this year’s Softonic Awards. With your votes, you have helped us choose the best software from the selection created by our expert editors.

Programs like the Google Chrome, iTunes, the epic Infinity Blade II, Picasa, and the revolutionary FIFA 12 have received an award based on your votes. You can check out the winners for best programs per category in the results page of the Softonic Awards 2011.

Stay tuned since we will start contacting via email the winners of the Kindle e-readers!

Thank you all very much for participating! Hope to see you next year in a new edition of the Softonic Awards.

On February 27th the Mobile World Congress will be inaugurated in Barcelona, home of Softonic HQ and will last until March the 1st. The MWC is one of the biggest technology events worldwide and its celebrating its seventh edition in this city.

Our expert editors will be there to collect the best information so they can later write the full recap on our OnSoftware blog. We wanted to make something different this year, for that reason we’ll kickoff the MWC with an infographic.

Inside this infographic, our mobile technology experts take us through the recent past of the mobile phone industry and propose 7 trends that could hit the spotlight on future editions of the MWC. The death of the screen as we know it, new ways to interact with apps or the use of mobile devices to improve the monitoring of our health are just some of those trends.

We’ll have to wait and see what will surprise us on the 2012 MWC. The best is yet to come!

If you want to see the full infographic click here.

Tomas Diago, Softonic’s Founder and President received last night the prestigious Emerging Entrepreneur Award, from Ernst & Young. These awards celebrate their XVI edition in Spain and they are granted annually by Ernst & Young in collaboration with IESE and BNP Paribas. These awards are given in recognition to the achievements of the best entrepreneurs and the most successful business practices in Spain.

The jury composed by prominent individuals from the business and economic sector, analyzed each of the 15 finalist candidates taking into account the nominee’s business management skills as well as the sustained growth of their companies regarding the number of employees and turnover.

The award ceremony was held in the Madrid Casino offering a dinner gala with the attendance of representatives from the business, economic, academic and institutional sectors. The Minister for Industry, Energy and Tourism of the Spanish Government, Jose Manuel Soria, participated in this event handing out the awards and delivering the closing speech, where he spoke about the importance of promoting entrepreneurial initiatives as way to overcome the financial crisis. Soria also highlighted “the complexity of being an entrepreneur in Spain and the huge opportunity governments have now a days to transform the legal framework in order to simplify the process for those who want to become entrepreneurs”.

Tomas Diago has received this award as Emerging Entrepreneur in recognition to his role as founder and main promoter of Softonic’s success. In his speech he acknowledged that “this award is a recognition for the hard work all of us do on a daily basis at Softonic” and he added “receiving this award is a motivation to continue working to keep the leadership of our sector”.

Softonic’s very own global software awards, the Softonic Awards are back! This year, celebrating their 8th edition, you will have once again a chance to participate choosing the best software.

Our local expert editors have hand-picked what they consider the best software for 8 different operating systems: Windows, Mac, Symbian, iPhone, Android, Java, WebApps y Linux. From today until March 31st you can vote for your favorite software on different categories: instant messaging, multimedia players, antivirus, games, photo editors, word processors or web browsers.

This year the Softonic Awards are expanding internationally. Joining our users from the Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese sites, the newcomers from our Japanese and Chinese sites will also vote on their favorite software, giving this edition a special meaning.

Cast your vote! Participating is really easy and you can get a chance to win one of the 20 Kindle e-readers.

What are you waiting for? Vote for your favorite software!

Today we are here to witness the beginning of a new friendship, between Softonic Moba, Softonic’s official mobile app and Android, one of the biggest operating systems out there.

From now on, users with an Android Smartphone will be able to enjoy a new way to discover, download and share the best apps.

This is because Softonic Moba takes it a step further, it is more than a simple app download portal, it is a gateway to Softonic content: blog posts, videos and of course, the full software catalogue for Windows, Mac and the rest of the platforms.

This is possible thanks to the effort of a lot of people. From the different departments here at Softonic who have nourished our “new born” with their ideas, to the iPhone version users, launched two months ago, who have made their comments and suggestions, helping us improve Softonic Moba. A big thank you to all!

Softonic Moba is available at Softonic and in the Android Market. What are you waiting for? Start enjoying your mobile Softonic style!

Free Download Softonic Moba for Android here.

Each year, we celebrate Christmas in advance at Softonic. This way, we can all enjoy the big party before people go back home for the holidays.

Last Friday, December 16^th, Softonic HQ was filled with Christmas spirit: wrapping paper from the Secret Santa, lights, wreaths, even those bright red Santa Claus hats…

Can you imagine more than 200 people opening their Secret Santa presents at once… It was amazing! After that great moment, the tables were covered with wrapping paper and ribbons, since everybody ran to either participate or cheer for their favorite teams in the game room finals. We were able to witness moments of glory and defeat with FIFA, foosball, Dance Central and Buzz.

The winners got their prices during our dinner party at the Juan Carlos I Hotel. We had a great time, lots of laughter, dancing and… lots of tweets! That’s because, this year we wanted to become Trending Topic with a special hashtag created for our party. Following that hashtag we were able to see on real-time what was happening around Softonic HQ and during the dinner party at night. All sorts of fun situations were tweeted, pictures of Secret Santa gifts, doubts on what to wear for the party, the arrival at the hotel, requests for the DJ, and… we are glad to announce, that during the morning, we reached the 6^th most tweeted about topic in Spain!

With so many people tweeting about the subject during the dinner party; who knows, we might have even reached it at night also! The thing is we were having way too much fun to check it out!

From all of us here at Softonic, we want to wish you all happy holidays and a great new year for 2012!

Enjoy your holidays! Enjoy Software!

Last week, Softonic took part in the Madrid leg of an app showcase like no other by offering our expertise and knowledge of apps in order to judge some of the best.

Presented as a ‘traveling showcase of the most creative and innovative apps’ AppCircus boasts interesting new software and introduces its aspiring creators to the public. In reality, the ‘circus’ has a lot more performances in stock, such as valuable crash courses in app design (by successful startups) and advisory sessions by established software companies.

This edition of AppCircus was held at the UC3 (Universidad Carlos III) in Madrid, taking full advantage of the inspiring environment for both developers and the sponsors present. A total of 10 developers were able to present their apps in front of a jury, while sponsors were given ample opportunities to invite young programmers to start developing for their platforms! Softonic formed part of the jury with Merijn de Boer (Editor, mobile expert) at the front row.

It’s just one of the many ways we get involved and interact with those on the forefront of cutting-edge new software outside of the office!

Since Softonic started in 1997, we have worked very hard to improve every day .

During almost 15 years, we have gone from working in a tiny office, where a small amount of people took care of all the tasks, to having 5 offices in different continents where more than 260 people work together as a team; always keeping that same spirit which we began with.

Today we have great news we want to share with all of you: Softonic has reached 4 million daily downloads!

This is more than just a number. It is a milestone, which we have achieved thanks to constant effort, our users’ trust and the goal to follow our mission: to help people discover and enjoy software to enhance their lives.

Join us and let’s celebrate 4 million reasons to enjoy Software.

If you want to see the full infographic, click here.

If you remember, back in January, we expanded at the Meridian building and we opened a new office on the 17 th floor at our headquarters in Barcelona. Today we are happy to share with you some pictures of our latest expansion to the 16th floor.

This new area has a special motif, dedicated to travelling around the world and the knowledge that we gain through opening our eyes to other cultures. This floor will become the new home for our colleagues from the Content Team (they are the ones who analyze, try, and review all the software that we post on Softonic on a daily basis), the Costumer Service Team (our voice and contact with what’s most important to us: you guys out there) and OnGames, the site that specializes in PC and Console video gaming content, which is part of the Softonic Universe.

We keep growing to continue offering you the best from the software world!

If you want to join the Softonic Team, don’t hesitate and check our job offers. We’re looking for talent!

In 2012, it will be 15 years since Softonic was launched. During all this time we’ve worked really hard to make our website yours.

It went from a final college project by our President & Founder Tomas Diago, to a user community of more than 100 million monthly users. We went from a small office in Cerdanyola del Valles, to a great headquarters in an amazing building in Barcelona with more than 210 team members from 32 different nationalities.  We evolved from a big online software library, to a full on software service central for our users.

Nowadays, Softonic is not only a download site. We’re also a site available in 10 different languages, with its specific local taste when it comes to reviews written by native speaking editors. In Softonic you’ll find software specialized blogs with posts from our expert editors and we also have a site specifically for you gamers out there. We’ve recently launched a Q&A site with all things software and a Smartphone app that has become a great guide for our users when it comes to finding the best apps out there. We have our very own advertising platform, a Security Seal that makes us the safest website in the world, a web apps platform, where applications are not downloaded since they’re available through the browser and lots of amazing projects still to come.

That’s why the day has come when we’ve decided to change our slogan. Let’s say goodbye to “Let’s download!” and prepare ourselves to receive with a welcoming smile “Enjoy Software!”.

It is the best way to reflect our mission of helping people discover and enjoy the best software to enhance their lives.

Enjoy Softonic, Enjoy Software!