Apple has acquired Burstly, the company behind iOS testing platform TestFlight

test flight

TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has acquired Burstly, the company behind the popular iOS testing platform TestFlight. There’s no word on the details, or pricing, but the company has confirmed the acquisition and its employees are already working in Cupertino.

For those unfamiliar with the service, TestFlight allows developers to distribute its apps to beta testers before pushing them to the App Store for release. It’s similar to HockeyApp, and several developers create their own testing platforms via Apple’s enterprise program…

Here’s the original report from TechCrunch:

“Burstly, the makers of an in-app ad management platform called SkyRocket and the parent company of popular mobile app testing platform TestFlight, has been acquired, we’re hearing. We’ve been pointed in Apple’s direction by a few of sources, and it makes sense as several odd things have been going on with TestFlight in recent days.

On Wednesday, TestFlight announced it would be terminating Android support as of March 21, for example, while also announcing that it was discontinuing its TestFlight SDK. According to support documentation, only existing teams will be able to continue to upload builds with the SDK. New users and those who have never uploaded the SDK are now being asked to remove it from their builds.

The company also shut down FlightPath, its mobile analytics solution that entered into beta last year, following the Burstly/TestFlight tie-up. Links to FlightPath now redirect to the TestFlight homepage, and this seems to be a recent change.”

Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet has since confirmed the deal using the company’s boilerplate response of “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” It’s essentially the same statement they always use.

As for what Apple is doing with the Burstly team, we don’t know. It could be trying to put together its own app-testing platform for developers using TestFlight’s tech, or it could just be interested in their talents. It could also have something to do with its mobile analytics solution.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook said that Apple has bought 21 companies over the past 15 months. Most of these have been smaller startups, but Cook told The Journal that his team has absolutely “no problem spending 10 figures for the right company.”