Urban Airship Creates Mobile Infrastructure Juggernaut Through Acquisition of SimpleGeo

SAN FRANCISCO and PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 31, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Urban Airship, maker of the leading platform used by brands to engage their consumers on mobile, announced that it has agreed to acquire SimpleGeo, the real-time services platform company that lets developers build location-aware features into their web and mobile apps.

The all-stock deal will allow Urban Airship to offer a complete mobile engagement platform - including a scalable infrastructure and range of tools and services - so that brands and developers can create cutting edge mobile apps.  It brings push notifications, in-app purchasing, subscriptions, context and geo-location together on a single platform, enabling developers to build a new class of apps that are smarter, more context-rich and more valuable to consumers.

Urban Airship will give brands and developers the ability to create new mobile experiences that are immediate, simple and relevant, along with the data needed to understand behavior so those experiences can improve over time.  For example:

• A retailer could push coupons to someone who is in the parking lot, or walking down a particular aisle in the store.
• A major league supports team could send different messages to fans based on whether they are at the stadium, on their couch, or at the pub.
• A reservations service could send recipes for top-rated dishes at the restaurant a customer just sat down at.

"Companies should not have to rely on a fragmented and unwieldy mix of tools that only deliver part of what is needed to understand how people are interacting with their brand on mobile," said Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton. "We've been working with SimpleGeo for months now and knew that putting the two companies together would create a powerhouse as a one-stop-shop for developers and marketers to build, monetize and measure the success of their apps in the ecosystem."

"Since we announced our partnership with Urban Airship last summer, we quickly realized that our two companies have the opportunity to build something much larger together," said SimpleGeo CEO Jay Adelson.  "This combined services platform provides not only strong value in the current mobile app ecosystem, but also will redefine the future of engagement and monetization."

Urban Airship has more than 20,000 customers using its tools and services to power their mobile applications. The data across hundreds of thousands of apps, millions of consumers and billions of notifications puts the company in a unique position to understand how people interact with their mobile devices. Through powerful analytics tools, this insight is served back to their customers in order to improve the app experience, which is every developer's aim.

Urban will retain the SimpleGeo office in San Francisco, and invest heavily in adding to the team there, as well as the company's headquarters in Portland, Oregon.  SimpleGeo executives Jay Adelson, Matt Galligan, Rob Bailey and Joe Stump will continue as strategic advisors.

About Urban Airship

Urban Airship powers the world's most successful mobile apps. Providing breakthrough technology, Urban Airship makes mobile marketing far more engaging, effective, and efficient. Top brands depend on Urban Airship to ensure their mobile app initiatives are scalable and profitable. Dictionary.com, Groupon, Yahoo, Weather Channel and Warner Bros. are just a few of the thousands of companies that utilize Urban Airship's innovative platform to reach and engage target audiences and increase app revenue streams through push notification, rich messaging, in-app purchase, subscriptions and data tracking. The company's investors include True Ventures and Foundry Group. Urban Airship is headquartered in Portland, Oregon with offices in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.urbanairship.com and follow us on Twitter @urbanairship.com.

SOURCE Urban Airship