App Annie launches internal research team, hires top IDC analyst

Mobile analytics company App Annie is building a bigger and deeper internal research team for major clients and the company’s own thought leadership by hiring former IDC mobile lead Danielle Levitas.

One of the goals: custom research and insight for big clients.

Above: Danielle Levitas

Interestingly, App Annie has been on a senior exec hiring spree, bringing in several senior executives including Paul Stolorz, a former Google, Netflix, and NASA employee, as chief data scientist. It’s almost as if the company was prepping for some kind of major liquidity event late this year or early next.

Danielle Levitas’ role will be senior vice president of research and analysis.

A big draw, for her, was App Annie’s almost unparalleled access to rich mobile data from the 700,000 apps that currently use its analytics.

“The depth of app data at App Annie is tremendous and definitely one of the main reasons I joined the company,” Levitas told VB via email. “My mind is constantly thinking about new kinds of analysis we can and need to deliver to the market. Being able to combine store activity with demographics, monetization models, device types, etc. is incredibly exciting to me.”

Given that App Annie says that it has tracked over 83 billion downloads and $25 billion in revenue to date, that’s understandable.

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In addition to doing thought leadership and crafting custom research for major clients, Levitas will also be helping App Annie’s product team focus on needed innovations — and will manage App Annie’s relationships with research firms.

In other words: App Annie isn’t looking to replace research firms, but rather to help busy and overwhelmed clients.

“While clients have access to an incredible set of mobile app data through our Intelligence offerings, we know that many have unique requirements and too little time,” Levitas said. “For us, this indicates a clear opportunity to build out a team that can support custom analysis services as well as breathe life into the data through that analysis, and help articulate the ‘so what’ to drive positive impact and empower our customers to make smarter decisions.”

And about that executive cupboard-stocking?

There’s no rush to go IPO, according to CEO Bertrand Schmitt.

“We don’t have any immediate plans to go public,” Schmitt said via email. “We’re happy to stay private and be independent for the foreseeable future, but will always consider the right avenues to help us build the best company for our employees and mobile community.”