App Annie Acquires Mobile Measurement Service Mobidia

Mobile app intelligence platform App Annie is today announcing that it has acquired Mobidia, a mobile measurement service that was one of the earliest app usage data providers on the market having entered that space in 2012. The company, founded in 2004, had one of the largest datasets on mobile app usage and intelligence, having tracked hundreds of thousands of apps and mobile networks worldwide.

The companies declined to provide the financial details of the deal, but it’s a mixture of cash and stock. Mobidia had raised just over $16 million in outside funding over the years, according to CrunchBase. We understand also that the final acquisition price was not a huge number in comparison to the big asset this deal brings to App Annie.

Mobidia’s Vancouver headquarters will now become App Annie’s 12th global office, App Annie Canada.

As part of the agreement, Mobidia’s team of 30 will now be joining App Annie. This includes CEO Derek Spratt, who will be joining as VP and GM, App Annie Canada.

In addition, App Annie will now be combining Mobidia’s data with its own App Annie Usage Intelligence platform in order to accelerate its international expansion, the company says. With the additional data, the platform is able to offer its customers data in 60 countries for both iOS and Android.

With Usage Intelligence, customers can track an app’s active users, frequency of use, session length, value of each user and penetration by country, as well as
reach, engagement, context and data usage.

Mobidia also has a consumer-facing app called My Data Manager that helps consumers track mobile data consumption to help them stay within their plan limit and avoid overage fees. This app has millions of active users and provides insights into mobile usage trends, while all user data is aggregated and anonymized to ensure end user privacy. This ties in nicely with App Annie’s earlier moves to offer consumer-facing apps that allow it to gain further insights into real-world user behavior. For example, the company runs a Hong Kong-based subsidiary called Smart Sense, focused on much of the same thing.

This is the second significant acquisition for App Annie, which also acquired rival app store analytics provider Distimo last year.

By snapping up the other larger players in the app industry, App Annie is making it difficult for its competitors to catch up with its momentum. The company today has established itself as the leading app data powerhouse, with 90% of the top 100 publishers using its service, as well as over 400,000 mobile app professionals at 100,000 companies. Some of its bigger name customers include Electronic Arts, Google, LinkedIn, Line, Microsoft, Nexon, Nestle, Samsung, Tencent, Bandai Namco, Universal Studios and Dow Jones. Its customer base, when combined, accounts for nearly half of all app store revenue.

App Annie’s Usage Intelligence platform has been in beta testing since this January, but is now, as of today, publicly available.

The service is not only used by app publishers themselves, looking to better understand the metrics surrounding their own apps, but is also used by those in the wider app industry, including both investors and advertisers. Thanks to the Mobidia acquisition, the expanded dataset will allow App Annie customers to access estimates on app reach, engagement and retention, as well as analyze competitor apps, identify investment opportunities, and evaluate advertising revenue potential.

App Annie had hinted at the possibility that more acquisitions would be in the works this year when it announced the close of its $55 million Series D round of funding this January, saying at the time it would use the additional capital to help it further expand into international markets, invest in product and fund M&A activity.

The Mobidia acquisition actually checks all three of those boxes as it’s helping to accelerate the international reach of Usage Intelligence, while also bettering the product itself by way of the expanded dataset.

“Finding amazing talent in the mobile technology space is not easy,” says App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt. “When acquiring companies, we look for teams who share our passion for mobile apps and data, drive innovative thinking and are focused on making big things happen in mobile. With Mobidia, we’re fortunate to find a team that shares these same values.”