ReadWriteWeb

Mobile development company Appcelerator announced today that it is buying "backend-as-a-service" startup Cocoafish to implement cloud services and functionality in its Titanium Platform. Acquiring Cocoafish is an astute move by Appcelerator, which focuses on tools for developers to create native and mobile Web apps. The company realized in its latest mobile developer report that 84% of developers using Titanium were utilizing some type of cloud service. With Cocoafish, Appcelerator attempts to keep all the necessary mobile development tools on its own platform.

Appcelerator admits that with the purchase of Cocoafish it is moving into direct competition with other mobile cloud services providers like Parse, Kinvey and Stackmob. With Titanium and Cocoafish, Appcelerator now has an integrated client and mobile cloud platform making it one of the most powerful mobile tools providers on the market.

If you are a mobile developer, the findings of a report from framework provider Appcelerator and research firm IDC are fascinating. The Kindle Fire is, well, on fire. So, apparently, is the Barnes & Noble Nook Android tablet. Nokia and Microsoft are making headway with Windows Phone, BlackBerry continues its free fall and HTML5 has superseded everything but iOS and Android in developer interest.

Freemium is becoming the standard mobile business model and with that developers are looking for tools to scale, create loyalty and enhance engagement to increase monetization. You can access the full report here. Check out our commentary and analysis below. Developers: what are your priorities and monetization strategies?

Mobile development framework Appcelerator is announcing a $15 million round of funding today from Red Hat, Translink and Mayfield to continue developing its Titanium integrated development environment. Appcelerator will use the new cash to branch its offerings by adding HTML5 Web app development to its framework, increase its sales staff and fuel international expansion.

Appcelerator's shift into HTML5 is being propelled by its acquisition of Particle Code a couple of weeks ago. This round of funding will help pay for the Particle Code acquisition. It is an important moment for Appcelerator as it looks to flesh out it robust developer ecosystem and become one of the leading frameworks for the present and future of mobile development.

There is a new entrant into the mobile component app store market. Chupa, an Italy-based startup, has released its mobile component store out of private beta and it includes tools for native and mobile Web application development with support for some of the major development frameworks.

Chupa follows in the footsteps of Appcelerator, which released a mobile component store in September. It remains to be seen if Chupa will have the kind of developer clout that Appcelerator has achieved with a base of over 1.5 million. Take a look at Chupa's offerings and let us know in the comments if its model works for your development needs.

Mobile cloud platform Appcelerator is having its first-ever developers' conference this week in Mountain View dubbed CODESTRONG. At the conference the company is announcing the "Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace" that is essentially a Salesforce AppExchange-like marketplace for independent software vendors and cloud providers. Appcelerator's marketplace is the first ever to bring software and solutions specifically for mobile to a centralized hub and could be an inflection point for how mobile development growth and how tools are bought and shared.

Appcelerator, through its acquisition of Aptana this January, gives it a developer base of almost 1.5 million. The marketplace will be integrated into the company's Titanium platform and provide mobile modules, app templates, design and cloud extensions. Salesforce was a driver behind cloud development with AppExchange. Appcelerator hopes to do the same with mobile.

AppCentral this week announced their Developer Lab, a free resource for developers that provides the tools, solutions and support needed to build, deploy and manage mobile enterprise apps running on iOS and Android devices. The lab allows you to test your apps in production for up to 20 users, and have access to a variety of development tools include Appcelerator Titanium. You can create a custom enterprise app store and deploy up to four app updates within any given year, and also participate in their own discussion forums to learn more about app best practices.

Appcelerator, the makers of the mobile development framework Titanium, announced a partnership with Ruby on Rails platform-as-a-service provider Engine Yard today. Engine Yard developers will be able to create cross-platform applications using Titanium while leaving their Rails backend environments virtually unchanged. Titanium developers will be able to take advantage of Engine Yard's scalable services for building backends.

According to the announcement, the two companies will "integrate and certify each other's technologies, jointly develop best practices, and create common architectural patterns to help developers build mobile applications using Appcelerator Titanium with Ruby on Rails backends developed and deployed on the Engine Yard platform."

Earlier this summer, we posed the question of whether or not native mobile applications would eventually be made obsolete by the mobile Web. Many agreed that the power of the mobile Web and cloud over native apps may be an inevitability, but according to a survey released today, four out of five app developers say their customers prefer a native experience. With this demand from customers, which features are they looking for most in a mobile experience? Here are some results from the survey that may surprise you.

Though Mountain View-based startup Appcelerator has been working together for roughly 3 years, it wasn't until this past March when the venture-backed company launched Titanium to the general public. Appcelerator's flagship product, Titanium offers a platform on which Web developers can build native mobile applications that are easily portable from one platform to another. Today Appcelerator announced the passing of several milestones as thousands of apps have been built by over 65,000 developers - including many well-known name-brand clients.

Back in August, after the release of the company's Android app, I spoke with GetGlue CEO Alex Iskold about how his startup prepared itself for making the move to mobile. The app first launched on the Web, and thus the company's developers were most familiar with languages native to the Web. In order to transition to mobile, Iskold and GetGlue employed the services of Appcelerator's Titanium - a tool that simplifies native mobile app development for developers. Today I had the chance to chat with Appcelerator's Scott Schwarzhoff about how young companies can plan ahead for their development strategy by anticipating the three phases of app maturity.