Data Vendor App Annie Buys Mobidia, Looking to Grow, Stay Independent

Mobile analytics company App Annie said Wednesday it is buying Vancouver-based app data provider Mobidia in a cash and stock deal.

App Annie CEO Bertrand Schmitt said the deal will help the company speed up its international expansion as well as its efforts to track usage, rather than just downloads, for specific apps. App Annie had been looking to expand to 10 countries this year, but with the Mobidia deal it will now be in 60 countries.

Plus, in a world where mobile data companies are often gobbled up by major app platform providers like Facebook and Apple, App Annie is hoping to remain a standalone business. Rival Onavo was acquired by Facebook in 2013 for roughly $120 million.

“We believe there is a lot of value to have an independent player like us,” Schmitt said in an interview at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Continuing to make purchases helps the company in its bid to remain a strong independent presence, while staying focused on its core business of helping those who make and publish apps to better understand their customers.

“We are not planning to do anything else,” Schmitt said.

The company has free app rankings across iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Windows Phone, but has focused its paid efforts on iOS and Android.

On the paid side, App Annie is looking to increase the level of depth with which it tracks app usage as well as the regions and operating systems it tracks. Initially the company focused only on apps available from the Apple and Google Play stores. Schmitt said the company now tracks those sold through Amazon and is looking to cover some of the Chinese Android app stores later this year, with expansion to Windows a possibility for next year.

The other big shift is to better track usage within apps so that publishers that fund their efforts through advertising can make better sense of how long customers are using their apps and those of rivals.

With Mobidia’s 30 workers, App Annie will now have about 350 employees worldwide.

Schmitt said that the deal is slightly smaller than last year’s acquisition of Distimo, but the company isn’t giving specific details.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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