uTest snaps up Poland's Apphance in seven-figure mobile apps deal

US testing services provider uTest has acquired Apphance, a Polish developer of mobile testing tools.

The exact value of the deal has not been disclosed, but the cash and equity acquisition runs into seven figures, according to an announcement by uTest and Polidea.

The Apphance-uTest deal is probably the largest single transaction in the Polish mobile application space, Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reports.

Apphance supports in-the-wild testing, where getting testing environments are as close to real-world scenarios as possible. By adding Apphance code to their mobile applications, developers can track diagnostics and reports through a web interface while the application is being tested. The software tracks bugs and crashes, and offers over-the-air update services.

Until its acquisition by uTest, Apphance was part of Polidea, a software services company based in Warsaw. In 2011, the developer recorded revenue of 4 million zloty (around $1.2m).

Like most companies of its kind, Apphance is fairly young - the company started in 2009 - and therefore quite small. Currently the company has a staff of 30, most of whom are engineers.

The Apphance employees will be transferred to uTest, which employs 60,000 professional testers in 190 countries. The Apphance brand will be retained, with the uTest name added to the front of it.

While UTest has been offering Apphance services to its customers, which include Google, Amazon and USA Today, since 2011, the buy-out came as a bit of a surprise for the Polish company.

"I have to admit at first we only talked about operational co-operation," Polidea CEO Jakub Lipinski told Rzeczpospolita.

The worldwide market for mobile apps is continuing to rise sharply. According to figures from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, consumers are predicted to spend $22bn on mobile applications in 2013, up from $16bn in 2012 and $11bn in 2011.