Mobile app analytics firm Flurry has released an updated version of one of its most popular research reports, first published three years ago. In the prior report, Mobile Apps: Money, Models and Loyalty, the company took an in-depth look into customer loyalty by app category. Today, Flurry does so again, focusing specifically on the 700,000+ applications that run on iPhone, iPad and maybe soon… → Read More
Italian startup and cross-platform development solution AppsBuilder today announced a €1.5 million (just shy of $2 million U.S.) venture funding round, led by Italian angel investors Massimiliano Magrini and Mario Mariani, with participation from Vertis Venture and Zernike Meta Ventures. The company, founded in 2010, wants to use the funding to help expand further internationally → Read More
Boston and Israel-based Perfecto Mobile, the makers of a testing and monitoring platform for mobile apps and websites, is today announcing it has secured $15 million in a Series C round of financing. The new funding was led by Globespan Capital Partners, and saw participation from existing investors Carmel, Vertex and the Waisbein Fund. → Read More
Editor’s note: Oliver Lo is vice president of marketing for App Annie.
Developers the world over are looking to cash in on the Google Play gold mine, and with 137 percent revenue growth in the first seven months of this year, we really can’t blame you for getting a bit excited. It’s easy to get starry-eyed when you see Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise making $100 million a year, not to… → Read More
The service operates in a crowded space, where dozens upon dozens of apps offer ways to stream, record, broadcast, and/or share video recorded on mobile, but Cloudee’s niche was in the emerging “private sharing” space. That trend has more recently taken root as companies try to find new ways to engage in a social networking arena dominated by the likes of Facebook. Cloudee, then, put its focus on… → Read More
Editor’s note: Matt Cohler is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He’s responsible for identifying investment opportunities in Internet-related companies, in addition to working closely with companies across the firm’s portfolio. You can follow him on Twitter here.
I wrote a Quora post the other day saying that mobile is just now becoming the most important platform and that winners… → Read More
The mobile app market, currently still led by app trailblazer Apple, is continuing to grow at a rapid pace: according to new research from Gartner there will be nearly 46 billion mobile app downloads made this year, nearly double the 25 billion downloads in 2011. Among those downloads, free will continue to reign supreme: 89% of those downloads worldwide will cost nothing. That is also appearing… → Read More
Based on downloads, Facebook’s iPhone app was no longer the most popular mobile social networking app in many Asian countries and elsewhere from July 2011 to June 2012. This, according to the latest report from app store analytics firm Distimo, which took a look at trends surrounding mobile social networking applications over the past two years. Distimo found that apps like LINE, WeChat and Viber… → Read More
Wee Society, a new effort emerging from a small design and branding studio based in San Francisco, has just published its first app, a children’s interactive book called Wee A B See. And it’s the first of many products – not just apps – which this new company plans to produce.
Now, you may not have heard of Office, as the studio is called, but you probably have come across their work. It’s the… → Read More
YogiPlay, a Menlo Park-based company from husband-and-wife team Cedric and Michal Selling, is attempting to tackle the critical problem of surfacing appropriate, trusted, and carefully vetted educational apps for children. The company recently raised $1 million in VC funding from DN Capital and Richmond Park Partners, in order to develop a system for rating apps for kids, specifically targeting… → Read More
Smore, a startup which lets anyone quickly build attractive, single-page websites which it calls flyers, is rolling out a new version of its service today to specifically targets mobile app developers. Called simply “app flyers,” these mini, customized websites can be built in seconds by pulling in data from the App Store itself, then allowing users to tweak the design using a handful of built-in… → Read More
With the consumerization of enterprise and BYOD in full swing, big companies are being pressed into finding better ways to give their customers (and their employees) access to a robust yet user-friendly mobile experience — across mobile platforms. Looking to bring a little fresh air to the enterprise mobile market, former SAP, Oracle and Siebel Systems execs teamed up to launch AnyPresence in… → Read More
Peter Deng of Facebook said on stage at the TechCrunch CrunchUp today that the company’s mission is now focused on mobile.
There is no single team that is focused on mobile, said Deng, Facebook’s director of product development. Instead, each group, be it the messaging or location teams, are thinking about mobile development. → Read More
In the mobile application ecosystems offered by the iOS and Android platforms, there’s now a booming “middle class” of mobile application developers, according to new data from analytics firm Flurry. Even the long tail is benefiting – something that goes counter to traditional industry trends, which tend to see wealth established at the top as an industry matures. Typically, established players… → Read More
Following Apple’s acquisition of Chomp, the app search and discovery business continues to heat up. Last month, app search startup Quixey raised a healthy $20 million Series B, and today a much younger startup, AppHero, has raised a $1.8 million seed round for its app recommendation platform.
The round included investment from OMERS Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and ENIAC Ventures… → Read More
Mobile app component marketplace and former Disrupt finalist Verious has just announced a strategic partnership with mobile operator Deutsche Telekom which will expand its international footprint and reach. The mobile operator is now launching its Verious-powered Developer Garden Component Marketplace across 14 countries in Europe, where it will feature not only mobile app components for iOS… → Read More
It’s a familiar scenario for small business owners: You want your business to have a mobile presence, ideally native on Android and iOS, but you don’t want to pay a developer an armload to build that presence. You would do it yourself (after all, 12-year-olds can do it), but there’s no point in having a mobile presence if it’s just going to look sloppy. That just hurts your brand.
While a slew… → Read More
We first wrote about Tiggzi, a DIY mobile app maker that gives you far more flexibility than most of its competitors, when it launched its public beta a few weeks ago. Since then, the service, which was developed by software engineering company Exadel, has added quite a few more features, making it even easier to develop relatively fully featured apps with its drag-and-drop interface. Among these… → Read More
Icenium is a brand-new integrated cloud environment (get it? i-c-e not i-d-e = Icenium) for mobile application development. The service, which is a spin-off product division at Telerik, is just now entering its private beta stage and is in search of developers willing to kick the tires. Initially, Icenium will focus on the iOS and Android development platforms, and will later expand to other… → Read More
Google today launched version 2.0 of its search app for iPhone. Google completely overhauled the design of the app, which now looks and feels more like the app’s iPad version the company launched last November. The new version feels significantly faster than the last one and the new design works especially well for image searches. Surprisingly, Google hasn’t officially announced the update yet… → Read More
Earlier today, David Lee of SV Angel said that one of the hottest areas to watch in tech right now is the area of mobile commerce and companies that can “close the loop” between online and offline transactions. Today sees the launch of Cardify, a mobile app and merchant dashboard that aim to solve that challenge from the direction of customer loyalty.
The idea behind Cardify, a contestant… → Read More
Appia, an app marketplace and white-label app platform, is broadening its support for Android with the introduction of Pay Per Install App Advertising for Google Play (formerly known as the Android Market). Up until now, all the downloads generated through PPD (pay per download) were done through an Appia-powered app store, but now developers can purchase a Pay Per Install campaign and drive… → Read More
For a while now “gamification” has largely existed as a buzz word. It’s felt just as ridiculous to write the word as it is to read it. However, as Tim Chang pointed out this weekend, although it’s important to avoid thinking of “gamification as the panacea,” it’s real, it’s moving beyond media and fitness, and it needs to be taken seriously. When it comes to educational tools, gamification has… → Read More
Newfangled social and gaming apps are popular and all, but it turns out that some content dating back thousands of years can still hold its own in today’s tech landscape. YouVersion, a Bible reading app made by nationwide Christian megachurch LifeChurch.tv, has crossed the 50 million download mark across the variety of mobile devices on which it’s available. → Read More
Vungle, a new company that wants to help mobile developers market their apps through video “trailers,” has just raised an enormous $2 million seed round from the who’s who of Silicon Valley. The round includes Google Ventures, AOL Ventures [Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by AOL], Crosslink Capital, SV Angel, 500 Startups, SoftTech VC, as well as several notable angels like Maynard Webb, Scott… → Read More
Twitter just announced the latest updates to its mobile apps for Android and iOS. With these updates, these apps get a number of much-needed new features, including an improved Discover tab, better support for search and support for push notifications for interactions. These new push notifications now let you know whenever somebody retweets you, favorites one of your tweets or when somebody new… → Read More
By all accounts, Y Combinator’s latest Demo Day held last month for its Winter 2012 class was a biggie. With 66 companies presenting their apps, it was pretty impossible to name a startup that was the clear star of the group. But judging from the buzz I’ve heard over the past few weeks, Socialcam, a mobile app for shooting, editing, and sharing smartphone videos, certainly emerged as one of the… → Read More
Using a smartphone while shopping to find better deals or to look up product reviews is now pretty mainstream. There are some interesting differences between how Hispanics use their phones while shopping compared to the average U.S. consumer, though. While observing 15 Hispanic smartphone owners in Los Angeles and conducting a nationwide survey of 500 Hispanic smartphone users in late 2011, White… → Read More
Famigo, the Austin-based startup building a directory of family-oriented and kid-friendly mobile apps, announced today that it has raised $1 million in funding led by Silverton Partners. Also participating in the round were Zilker Ventures, Liahona Ventures, and CapitalFactory.
The company, which currently offers an online directory of apps as well as parental control software for Android, says… → Read More
timeRAZOR, the D.C.-area startup which raised $3.4 million pre-launch to build a better events finder, has arrived today on mobile. The new apps, available for both iOS and Android, work by using your phone’s geolocation features combined with a built-in recommendation engine to help suggest nearby events that you may have otherwise missed. It also integrates with your phone’s built-in calendar… → Read More
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
