Third-party open application storefront Appia has been trying hard in the last several months to gain more consumer mind share. The company took a step towards that goal today, announcing a partnership with mobile distribution channel Zedge, a partnership that will bring Appia apps to users across the world.
Zedge is primarily known as a ringtones and wallpaper distributor. It is now branching out. Zedge’s store will now offers games and apps, powered by Appia. With a supposed 40 million unique monthly visitors, Zedge can provide Appia with a platform that expands the reach of the traditional application store.
Though Appia is growing, it has not caught as much developer interest. A month ago it announced outrageous growth numbers in comparison with other app stores, notching 40 million downloads for the month of July. That is more than 2,000% growth from its numbers in July 2010. Yet, as one developer I discussed Appia with said, “those are great growth numbers for an app store that nobody has heard about.”
Appia lives very much within the middle of the pack of the “second market” of mobile content distribution. The Amazon Appstore and Getjar (which Appia considers its closest competitor) are the leaders, while Appia is trying to make a push up the supply chain. It has several other major partners, notably Opera Software whose browser is downloaded on 120 million phone world wide. It also partners with Vodacom South Africa, Samsung and America Movil.
Those partnerships (along with the new one with Zedge) are an indication that most of Appia’s business is outside of the United States. It has a developer program with more than 32,000 developers across the globe and the extent of its partnerships gives it a reach of 250 million mobile subscribers (feature phones included) across 175 countries. Appia has 140,000 applications available across nearly all mobile platforms.
Those are robust numbers. Yet, it is curious that most U.S. users probably have no idea what Appia is or does. U.S. developers: are you among the 32,000 in Appia’s dev program? You know anybody who is? Let us know in the comments.
