Appcelerator rides the app wave with $15 million in funding

Appcelerator, which helps developers build native and HTML5 mobile apps, has been on a tear in the last year, going from 5,000 apps to 30,000 apps built off its Titanium platform. The company isn’t just getting notice from developers, investors have also taken note and have added another $ 15 million in funding in Appcelerator’s Series C round.

The new money comes from Mayfield Fund, Translink Capital and Red Hat, with additional funding from existing investors eBay, Sierra Ventures and Storm Ventures, which ponied up $ 9 million a year ago. All told, Mountain View, Calif.-based Appcelerator has raised $ 31.5 million to date.

The company said its growth in the last year makes it the largest third-party app publisher of mobile applications in the Apple App Store and Android Market. Its mobile apps built on Titanium are now on 30 million devices, compared to 2.5 million a year ago. And it now has 1.6 million developers, thanks to the January acquisition of Aptana, which makes an integrated development environment for web applications.

Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator, said the company is evolving to provide not just cross-platform tools for native apps but also HTML5 web apps, giving customers a way to easily get into native app stores and mobile browsers. Appcelerator will use the money to continue to develop Titanium and expand in Europe and Asia. Appcelerator will also use the funds to look at more acquisitions like the pick up last week of HTML5 web app specialist Particle Code.

Appcelerator is benefiting from the explosion in mobile apps, which is projected to go from 10.7 billion apps last year to 182.7 billion in 2015, according to IDC. It’s providing a good set of tools for developers and companies to push out mobile apps. Companies like NBC, eBay, Merck, GetGlue and others have turned to Appcelerator to build out mobile apps. It’s a good place to be as companies look for a simple way to hit multiple mobile platforms and also build out mobile-optimized websites.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.