App Annie Acquires Competitor Distimo, Raises Another $17 Million From Existing Investors

Big news in the world of mobile analytics providers this morning: App Annie is this morning announcing the acquisition of competing firm Distimo, as well as $17 million in new funding. The new round comes from existing investors IDG Capital Partners, Greycroft Partners and Sequoia Capital. This brings App Annie’s total raise to date to $39 million.

The company says the funds will be used to accelerate investment in new products, new platforms and new markets.

Distimo was a bootstrapped company for most of its life, but took on an undisclosed round of funding from Wellington Partners in late February in the form of a convertible note. This was likely a smaller round under good terms, as the company was already profitable for some time.

We hear that App Annie’s deal to acquire Distimo was a combination of cash and stock, and that some portion, but not all, of the newly raised $17 million went toward the acquisition. It’s likely that Distimo founders took a lot of stock in the deal, so the final price would be significantly higher – with even $100 million as a conservative estimate, assuming the company pulled in $20 million in annual revenue.

With the acquisition, Distimo’s four co-founders will take on key roles within App Annie’s team, and their Netherlands headquarters will become App Annie’s new European R&D center. Distimo CEO Vincent Hoogsteder will become App Annie’s VP and General Manager of “App Annie Netherlands.”

Distimo’s team will also be integrated into App Annie’s global offices, bringing their total headcount to over 240 employees worldwide (up from 110 last fall), and making the firm the largest app analytics company today. App Annie’s interest in the company was not only for technology and customers, but also Distimo’s in-house talent, we hear.

The combination of the two businesses will make the resulting company much stronger than either were individually. Today, App Annie’s services, which include app analytics, ranking data, app store SEO, marketplace intelligence, and more, are used by 90 percent of the top 100 app publishers by revenue. App Annie’s offerings began at $1200 per month, and went upwards of $20,000 per month for its full offerings – prices which help the company generate revenue from some of the App Store’s largest publishers.

Meanwhile, Distimo did well in Europe, and while it never touted how many of the top 100 publishers it had on board, it had several big-name publishers as customers, including Zynga, Fox, LinkedIn, Citrix, Fab, Samsung, Flixster, Skype, Evernote, Groupon, Microsoft, TimeWarner, Box, BBC, Amazon, CNN, Foursquare, Intel, PayPal, Fandango, Macy’s, Blackberry and many more.

Distimo customers

Distimo customers

Together, the two companies have nearly 600,000 apps using their analytics platforms with a total of nearly 270,000 registered business users.

In a message posted to its website this morning, Distimo says that in the months ahead, it will be working with App Annie to integrate its companies and products so customers could “benefit from the most complete platform for analyzing your own apps and the mobile app marketplace.”

In the meantime, Distimo customers can still log in to their Dashboards and use the service as usual.

Distimo’s focus, historically, had been on accuracy and methodology, which they publicly published and shared with the wider community through an ongoing series of reports, many of which we’ve covered here at TechCrunch. These reports would include insights into App Store trends, like how crowded the Top Charts have become, how many downloads you need to break into the Top 50, revenue and growth trends in the top app marketplaces, and more.

“Having been a part of the mobile app ecosystem since its inception, this acquisition represents a major milestone in App Annie’s growth, and it allows us to accelerate our product roadmap,” said Bertrand Schmitt, CEO of App Annie, in a statement released this morning. “We look forward to integrating the talented Distimo team and are excited about what they can achieve within the App Annie fold.”

Last fall, App Annie raised $15 million in Series C funding, which brought Sequoia Capital Partner Tim Lee and Greycroft’s Alan Gould onto its board. The company at the time was focused on expanding and upgrading its app intelligence offerings with a special focus on addressing the needs of its enterprise customers. For example, it introduced a web version of the service that provided daily, weekly and monthly data, which before had been more “old-school” in the form of Excel and CSV downloads. And it introduced integrations with Tableau to power in-depth and customizable visualizations.

The company then attributed its revenue growth to its business intelligence platform, noting that it had doubled its user base and tripled its revenue over the past year. App Annie had several big-name customers, as well, like Tencent, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, EA, King.com, Shazam, GREE, Kayak, Ubisoft, Konami, Hearst, Dropbox, Activision, Big Fish, DeNA, Storm8, KakaoTalk and Glu, to name a few.

Around the time of its Series C, App Annie said it would be looking to expand its footprint globally, especially in Asia and Europe. With Distimo remaining in the Netherlands, and with offices in London, Seoul, and Tokyo in addition to NYC and San Francisco, App Annie will have accomplished that goal.

This story is developing…refresh for more.