November 15th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
Mobile games and application website GetJar announced to have closed it’s first series A funding round and to have passed the milestone of 100 million downloads.
The 100 million downloads have been generated in just two years time. GetJar noticed a big increase in the number of downloads over time as in 2007, the website has generated three times the number of downloads than in 2006. The release doesn’t show if the website has received the same increase in unique visitors as it would be interesting to know how the number of visitors and downloaders correspond. If the numbers of downloads increase faster then the number of unique visitors, it would show that mobile games and applications increase more and more in popularity. Else, it would mean the awareness of the service increased.
For GetJar, the biggest increase has been spotted in the application section. This shows that consumers are more and more interested in extending the possibilities of their mobile phones. 25% of the downloads on the portal are from UK and US consumers. Messaging applications have proven the most popular downloads.
Mei Lin Ng, co-founder/VP at mobile community site mig33 commented, "Getjar has been important to our success in the mobile application space. They make it easy to deploy new applications from developers like ourselves, and even easier for mobile consumers out there to download the applications. Getjar is a great platform for anyone developing in the mobile space."
"To supply 100 million downloads to our users is not only a great achievement, but demonstrates how the use of mobile technology has developed far beyond phone calls and SMS messaging to richer communication, information and business applications," commented Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of GetJar.
To expand further in worldwide mobile markets, GetJar has recently closed a series A financing round with an investment from Accel Partners. The company had already relocated their offices to London where Heikki Makijarvi and Kevin Comolli from Accel Partners joined the board of the company.
"We are delighted to have secured such an excellent partner in Accel to help develop GetJar even further, explained Ilja Laurs, CEO of GetJar. "The team we have assembled has superb levels of experience which will enable us to build on what is already a worldwide user base and developer community."
"Everyone in the mobile world has long known about GetJar and what a phenomenon it has become," explained Kevin Comolli, Managing General Partner at Accel Partners in London. "This partnership will accelerate its growth to the next level and allow it to continue its record of success for it developer and user communities alike."
