Aptoide App Store
What it feels like to be free and prosper in the app world
The most common reason why startups fail is that they don't start. That’s how a research project in 2009, already named Aptoide, would one day become one of the biggest app stores in the world. By starting. By being disruptors. That is, by identifying a problem with an existing business or service and finding a way to make it more accessible, fast, cheap and efficient.
At the time the first Android phone, the G-1, showed up, along with Android Market - the original version of Google Play -, an opportunity was born. With Aptoide, you didn’t need to sign up for an account like you had to with Android Market. You were free to access all apps and games without the straightjacket of Google. You were also not being geolocated - and besides had a ton more apps and games available than in Market.
The name is Open, Open Source
Aptoide is part of the open source movement from the beginning, and the app store, in a sense, is the fullest expression of that vision -
2011 brought the first million of active users, and the research project turned into a global business. The timing was perfect - it was the early days of the smartphone and of a new hyperconnected, multimedia world - and the app store grew fast. Spain, Latin America, the US, Europe, Asia: these were Aptoide’s first turbo-markets.
The existential threat as opportunity
As Aptoide the parent company attracted local and international investors and opened offices in Singapore and China, the app store was on a roll, with ad revenue growing at high speed. That’s what made the sudden 2014 advertising crash - when Aptoide lost 85% of its revenue following Google’s well-documented, court-punished attack - so painful.
In fact, it could have been an existential threat for Aptoide, were it not for the team’s reaction. Immediately, there was an alternative solution - developing the CPI network. Eight weeks after the ad collapse, revenue was spiking again. The answer was different but the overall trend was the same - onwards and upwards.
