Lookout, a company that offers security data backup services for smartphones, is growing rapidly. Less than two months after the startup surpassed one million users, the company has crossed the 2 million registered users mark. It took just over six months to reach 1 million users.
Lookout, which recently raised $11 million from Accel, Khosla and others, says the growth in smartphone adoption, mobile app downloads and increased consumer awareness of mobile security threats have made consumers aware of the security threats on mobile phones.
While smartphone use is growing rapidly, there are security risks associated with the increased data and application usage on these devices. Similar to a PC, users need to protect their phones from malware, viruses, data loss and more. Lookout’s web-based, cloud-connected application indentifies and block threats on a consumer’s phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer.
Lookout also recently launched the App Genome Project which identifies applications that carry the same characteristics of established dangerous applications, quickly isolate them, and protect users. To date, Lookout has analyzed over 300,000 apps.
In less than one year in business, the company has also found lost or stolen phones for users more than 700,000 times, with a phone found every 15 seconds over the past two months. And Lookout has backed-up over 130 million photos and backed-up over 625 million contacts.
Lookout is of course riding on the growth in smartphone adoption, and the increased use of apps on these phones. For now Lookout, which is on more than 400 mobile networks in 170 countries, is only available for BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile devices. Lookout has over 80% of its users on Android and BlackBerry with the remaining users on Windows Mobile. And 70% of users are in the US.