Yahoo is buying Flurry Inc, a startup that helps other programmers build better mobile applications and craft marketing campaigns for smartphones and tablets.
The deal announced on Monday is the latest in a wave of mostly small acquisitions that Yahoo Inc has made during the two-year reign of CEO Marissa Mayer as the company's tries to attract more traffic on mobile devices.
The shopping spree hasn't yet provided Yahoo with the means to boost its revenue growth at a time more advertising is moving to online services. The Sunnyvale, California, company last week disclosed another lacklustre performance in the April-June period.
Yahoo didn't disclose how much it is paying for Flurry, an indication that the price isn't big enough to affect Yahoo's finances.
Flurry, based in San Francisco, says its analytics are used by 170,000 developers.
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Yahoo is counting on Flurry to provide it with the tools to work with more developers of mobile apps.
With most of its traffic now coming on mobile devices, Yahoo said its mobile ad revenue has more than doubled during the past year.
"Yahoo is committed to being a part of consumers' daily life on mobile," Flurry chief executive Simon Khalaf said in an online post.
"More importantly, Yahoo knows that it can't do this alone."
The take-over will provide Flurry resources to ramp up platforms for developers to build applications, target users, and explore ways to make money, Yahoo said in a release.
Yahoo maintained that 170,000 developers use Flurry analytics tools and that Flurry sees app activity from 1.4 billion devices each month.
Application creators are seen as crucial allies by technology firms eager to have fun, hip, or functional mini-programs that attract users to their products.
"We want to harness our collective innovative spirit and bolster the mobile ecosystem by providing developers the analytics and monetisation solutions to drive their success,"Yahoo senior vice president of advertising technology Scott Burke said in a release.
Along with tuning into mobile devices, Yahoo is ramping up its offerings for streaming video live or on demand.
