Telstra Ventures, the investment arm of Australia’s largest mobile operator, invested an undisclosed sum in US-based Headspin, a mobile application testing company.

With global mobile app downloads forecast by the company to jump from 149.3 billion in 2016 to 352.9 billion in 2021, Telstra Ventures MD Mark Sherman said: “[W]e see the need for organisations to test and monitor the user experience and performance of their applications on any global mobile network.”

The Headspin platform allows organisations to test their apps before launch, he said, and also provides the data to help enhance customer experience and benchmark against competitors after launch.

“As a company that provides connectivity, we are excited to leverage Headspin’s capability in simulating and measuring how customers experience our network,” Sherman noted.

Analysing data
Manish Lachwani, CEO and co-founder of Headspin, said its performance management, monitoring and testing platform covers more than 22,000 devices in 140 locations, and powers app developers serving more than 1 billion monthly active users globally.

He said this coverage enables it to collect data about the network performance, application performance and user experience, allowing it to carry out real-time analysis and give feedback about developer application activity, issues identified and suggested solutions, and a video playback of the customer experience.

“We look forward to working closely with Telstra to strengthen our reach in Asia Pacific given the strength of its network, customer relationships and market knowledge,” Lachwani added.

In March Telstra invested in US-based VeloCloud Networks as part of the start-up’s latest round of funding, which raised $35 million.

The operator in November 2016 also invested an undisclosed amount in Singular, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics company which monitors traffic of many of the world’s most popular mobile apps.