You may remember StartApp from their September 2011 launch, or perhaps from the $4 million the company raised in March. But today, 10 months after the initial launch, StartApp is back with the news that its search monetization software has been downloaded more than 150 million times on Android.
The company has said that around 4,000 live apps in the Google Play store are using its platform, with approximately 1.25 million daily SDK installs.
If you’re not already familiar with it, StartApp is basically a platform that lets developers bundle in a search portal with their app, meaning the user not only installs the Herp Derp app but they install a little search icon controlled by StartApp. Developers then receive a cut of the revenue generated by the search, though the user has every right to delete the icon immediately.
That said, 150 million downloads as opposed to 10 million downloads in December is a huge spike in growth.
Some developers have said that they have generated 10 times more revenue than they were before implementing StartApp, so clearly StartApp’s partners are happy campers. I’d be more interested, however, to see how users feel about that curious little search icon that appears after downloading an app. Sure, the developer is required to mention the search icon bundle, but I’ve blown through permissions and informative pop-ups plenty of times. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.
StartApp is a new monetization and distribution platform focusing on free applications for mobile phones. Startapp partners with app developers to help them make more money from their free apps by introducing search monetization to the mobile world.
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