Appcelerator raises $15M, now largest third-party app publisher on iOS, Android

I’ll skip the obvious “acceleration” puns and just say things are looking good for Appcelerator, maker of a cross-platform app development software.

The company announced today that it has raised $15 million in a third round of funding. It also revealed some stats demonstrating tremendous growth for its Titanium development platform, including the fact that it’s now the largest third-party app publisher on both iOS and Android.

Appcelerator says that the funding will be used to expand into Europe and Asia, as well as to help build up the Titanium platform.

Titanium allows developers to easily create native and HTML 5 web apps for mobile, tablets, and desktops. And developers are clearly jumping on Appcelerator’s platform: The company says it now has over 1.6 million developers in its ecosystem (many of which came from its acquisition of Aptana in January), over 30,000 apps published (a six-fold increase over last year), and its apps are on over 30 million devices. Appcelerator’s employee numbers also skyrocketed, jumping to 100 from just 17 a year ago.

The company is also looking to support other platforms with its app development, including connected TVs by the end of the year, VP of marketing Scott Schwarzhoff told VentureBeat in an interview last week. NBC is apparently already asking the company about using its tools to develop a Google TV app, which shouldn’t be too difficult since GTV is Android-based. As for Windows Phone 7, he said “it wasn’t a question of if, but when.”

This latest funding round was led by Mayfield Fund, Translink Capital, and Red Hat.

Appcelerator also snapped up the HTML 5 platform maker Particle Code last week — which was funded by this latest round — in an effort to ramp up its own HTML5 development offerings.

The third round of funding comes about a year after Appcelerator’s last round of $9 million. The Mountain View, Calif-based company has now raised around $24 million to date.