Flurry has become a prime resource for app developers to measure and monetize their mobile apps. But it hasn’t been a tool for actually building apps. That’s where the San Francisco company is going, however, with the announcement today that it has bought Seattle-based Trestle, a provider of mobile backend services.
Flurry has incorporated Trestle into its SDK and will offer new developer services under the name Flurry AppCloud. These services include push notifications, user account management and scalable storage. This bulks up Flurry’s developer offerings, which currently include analytics and tools for monetization, app distribution and re-engagement. AppCloud will start in beta for both iOS and Android apps and will be generally available later this summer.
Buying Trestle pits Flurry against other backend service providers like Kinvey, Parse and Stackmob. And it’s another sign of how the mobile developer services market will consolidate over time as providers look to offer a wider array of cloud services: Development tool provider Appcelerator bought mobile backend startup Cocoafish in February while Urban Airship (see disclosure below) in November bought SimpleGeo.
Flurry co-founder and CTO Sean Byrnes said Flurry’s developer backend offering will differ from competitors because it will be enriched with data from Flurry analytics. So developers will be able to segment push notifications by their audience using customer usage data. They’ll also be able to build apps that customize the experience for users based on analytics data. And having one less SDK to deal with will also be easier for developers, said Byrnes.
“I think you’ll see more consolidation in general in mobile services as the market matures,” Byrnes said. “The new currency is developer attention and there is more SDK fatigue now.”
Developers will pay for Flurry AppCloud based on monthly transactions. The first one million transactions each month will be free with every thousand transactions after that priced at 5 cents. Flurry is currently used by more than 70,000 developers, who deploy it in more than 200,000 apps.
As we’ve said before, the mobile app boom is creating a big market for mobile developer services. And mobile backend support is really popular because it helps developers easily connect their apps to cloud services. But increasingly it looks like many of the different tools for monetization, performance monitoring and other cloud services will likely get rolled up into larger offerings for developers.
Disclosure: Urban Airship is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, the founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.
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