Path hasn’t had a particularly smooth road in terms of PR lately, but today brings some good news from the social networking app.
Path will announce today that its app will be built in for one-touch downloading as a featured app on several new Sprint devices: The Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One and Torque. The app will be featured along with a handful of others that have been selected for Sprint’s “Discover-it” widget.
A Path spokesperson would not provide details about how long the Sprint partnership will last, or any financial terms associated with the deal. In a statement, Sprint’s product VP Kevin McGinnis indicated that there’s more to come:
“Sprint and Path are finding ways to collaborate to enhance our customers’ experience. This is a first step. We’re excited to work with a mobile-first, best-in-class design company like Path.”
For years, Path as an app and its founder, Facebook alum Dave Morin, have been known quite well within tech-savvy circles. But now the company is focusing on more widespread adoption. This could be a key introduction to a more mainstream audience that might not have otherwise sought out and downloaded Path on the Google Play store.
Moves like this are not a guarantee of app success — it was almost exactly a year ago that the now-defunct Color inked a big partnership to come pre-loaded on all Verizon devices, for example. But then again, many app-device partnerships, such as the one Twitter formed with Apple back in 2011, have been major wins.
Either way, for now it’s clear that Path, which has a user base that’s currently reportedly adding 1 million users per week, continues to aim for big growth — and is inking big partnerships to pursue it.