PORTLAND–Dylan Boyd, VP of Growth at Urban Airship, gave me a tour of the company’s Pearl District digs last Friday and he helped me understand more about the software products Urban Airship provides to thousands of customers looking to optimize their mobile Apps.
See an image of the lobby here.
Coming in, I was wondering where Urban Airship fit in the fast-emerging Portland mobile development scene–where Small Society and others firms are making big names for themselves. Boyd said, “We don’t build Apps, we support indie developers.” That support comes in the form of Push Notifications, In-App Purchase and Subscriptions and Advanced Tracking and Reporting.
“We provide the tool kits that App builders can utilize,” said Boyd.
For a company that’s just one year-old, the numbers Boyd shares are staggering. Over 10,000 Apps in Apple’s store use Urban Airship software. By extension these 10,000 Apps are loaded on tens of millions of iOS devices like iPhone, iPod and iPad.
Asked about this new space serving App developers, and what the competition looks like, Boyd said, “Some people do some of the things we do, but none do all the things we do.” One of the things Urban Airship provides is scale. For instance, they have a code library which developers use to assure multi-platform compatibility, instead of designing for Blackberry, Android and iPhone in isolation.
Boyd is clearly charged up by his new role and the heady atmosphere of creation at Urban Airship. The company’s offices are in the building formerly occupied by Ziba Design. There’s room after room of walls as whiteboards, many with complex looking formulas written on them. I don’t know what they say, but I know what Boyd said. “Android is going to be massive.”
Previously on AdPulp: Urban Airship Helps Marketers Get The Most Mobile App Bang For The Buck
