Two leaders in the world of mobile analytics have joined forced today with the announcement of a merger between Pinch Media and Flurry. The combined company, which will go forward under the Flurry name, will have a total of 20 employees and be better positioned to take on the future of mobile analytics.
Pinch Media and Flurry were two companies that shared a similar vision. Flurry has been more focused on e-commerce, while Pinch Media focused on ad-optimization. Both companies launched widely used analytics services for iPhone and Android devices, but have yet to become profitable doing so.
When combined, the companies plan to go beyond just providing data and become a full-on media company that offers services to developers- such as ways to mine data from users and target them with recommendations for mobile apps. Flurry already has a head start with its recent launch of AppCircle, a recommendation platform developers can install within their apps which will analyze a user’s taste in apps. Flurry gets paid through a revenue sharing agreement with the developer, and has high hopes for the concept.
Simon Khalef, chief executive of Flurry and soon-to-be CEO of the combined company, has stated he expects the companies to be able to offer a single combined service with the features of both Flurry and Pinch Media in the near future, but in the meantime, both companies will maintain their existing services. The core idea is to combine the massive amount of mobile data both companies have access to, organize it and make it available to developers.
It’s a smart move and a smart time to combine and streamline two of the leading mobile analytics providers. The newly formed company will be in a perfect position to take on mobile analytical data at the same time Android is making huge strides and the iPhone continues to drive use of mobile apps like never before. It should be interesting to see how the new Flurry will operate, and how quickly it can turn profitable.
