Aptoide: The World’s Top Independent Android App Store

“Aptoide, is an independent Android app store that allows developers, OEM, telcos, and integrators to create and manage their own Android store.”

This Portuguese growing startup is dominating via an alternative and decentralized Android app store that already reached more than 2 billion downloads (counting at least one download via the Aptoide platform) and has more than 100 million users all over the world, making them the world’s top alternative Android app store, before of other third-party app stores such as Yandex, AppBrain and the Amazon Appstore.

How Did It All Start?

The company started two years before it was officially launched. In the summer of 2009, an internship at Caixa Mágica (a linux distro) created what would later become the startup we know today, led by Paulo Trezentos and Álvaro Pinto, the two co-founders.

Their foresight was to adapt Debian’s “Apt” package manager to Android (Apt + Android = Aptoide), creating an alternative android market. Their key difference, to other app stores, is that their main focus is the user, enabling the community to download only the best apps.

Their HQ is located in Lisbon, but the startup also has offices in Shenzhen (China) and Singapore, focusing on targeting South-East Asia efficiently. They believe that a local need in providing and a strong alternative of the app store, where “consumers can discover and engage with apps made by locals” exists.

What’s The Benefit Of An Independent App Store?

Aptoide provides five apps: Aptoide Client, Lite, Aptoide Backup Apps, and Aptoide Uploader, that serve the users’ needs. Aptoide Client is the Android App Store most commonly known, Aptoide Lite is the same as Client but for low level devices, meaning, devices that have low quality internet, and less powerful processors. Aptoide Backup lets you save your apps to your store, while Aptoide Uploader lets you upload the .apk. Aptoide TV aims to target the Smart TV and Set Top Boxes industries. Aptoide also provides a white label store for tablets designed for children.

This path lead Aptoide to receive Series A funding in an amount of $4 million. These funds were given by a mix of VCs from Europe, China and South-East Asia (e.ventures, the same company that already invested in other Portuguese startup called Farfetch, Singapore’s Gobi Partners and Golden Gate Ventures). As far as objectives go, Aptoide wants to double the number of users, and to reach more than 200 million users, at the end of 2016. This investment will “accelerate global rollout efforts, with an emphasis on South-East Asia and Latin America” – states the CEO, Paulo Trezentos. For that, “more Human Resources at the engineering level are welcome”.

When we ask what’s the main motor of growth the answer is the community of users, because yearly more and more user retention is observed and that makes more people interact on the platform, until it gets to a point where growth is exponential and one part of the system feeds the other one.

To keep this level of performance it’s required to be at the right place at the right time – places like CES, BETT, Mobile World Congress, play an important role to connect with the key partners and entry in new markets or reinforce the ones in which they already are in.

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