The fund will target early-stage startups across the mobile spectrum, providing them with capital, engineering expertise, access to Appcelerator’s tools and a place to incubate the startup. The first startup is a mobile gaming platform maker Lanica, founded by Carlos Icaza, the former co-founder and CEO of Ansca Mobile, which developed the Corona cross-platform app development tool. The exact amount of the funding was not disclosed.

Icaza is teaming with Kota Iguchi, the former CEO of Japanese gaming company Infosia, to create a gaming engine that is built off Appcelerator’s Titanium platform and Appcelerator’s cloud services. Appcelerator has traditionally appealed more to enterprise customers but now it can offer to help those customers make games using Lanica’s technology. Lanica, which will offer a gaming platform that includes a physics engine and high-end graphics, has already signed up a big unnamed name company.

Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator, who appeared at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference last month, said the goal of the fund is to encourage outside innovation from promising mobile developers. Lanica is appealing because it addresses an area that Appcelerator is not as strong. But not all portfolio companies will need to be built around Appcelerator’s platform. Haynie said Appcelerator will spend about $1 million to $2 million over the next couple years and has already started funding two other startups.

“We believe there’s a lot of great stuff happening outside of our four walls and we want to encourage that,” he said. “We want to promote anything that accelerates our ecosystem or mobile in general.”

The hope is that that by providing capital and housing the startups, Appcelerator can speed up the development process for startups. Lanica, for example, was able to get up and running in three months. Other developers who want more information about the Innovation Fund can reach out to Appcelerator at appcfund@appcelerator.com.

Appcelerator, which is used by more than 350,000 developers, has been used to build more than 50,000 iOS, Android and HTML5 apps.

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In the survey of 5,526 Appcelerator Titanium developers in late August, 66 percent of respondents said it was “likely or very likely” that a mobile-first startup could break Facebook’s dominance in social. The results highlight the dynamic shift underway as more consumers move to smartphones and tablets from PCs, creating a potential for disruption for incumbents. And it helps further explain why Facebook bought Instagram, a mobile photo sharing social network that now counts 100 million users. Especially as younger consumers grow up on mobile, there’s a danger that something built from the ground up on a mobile platform can undermine Facebook, which is falling out of favor with some young mobile users. 

The developers also expressed their disappointment with many of the features in HTML5. Developers said they were neutral to disappointed with HTML5′s monetization (83.4 percent), security (81.8 percent), fragmentation (75.4 percent), performance (72.4 percent), timeliness of updates (67.9 percent), user experience (62 percent) and distribution control (60.3 percent). Developers were only positive on HTML5′s cross-development capabilities (83.4 percent) and immediate updates (81.8 percent).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted earlier this month that the company’s biggest mistake was betting on HTML5 over native apps. Even though Facebook’s web apps actually get more traffic than its native apps, Zuckerberg said the company’s hope that it could squeeze good enough performance from HTML5 proved too optimistic. Facebook reversed course with the latest iOS apps, which are built with native code instead of relying on HTML5.

The developer survey results help further explain why Facebook couldn’t rely on HTML5 at this point. As Zuckerberg pointed out, developers often can’t get the quality they want out of HTML5 apps. Shifting to native apps, however, has produced a 2x boost in the number of stories read on Facebook’s new apps, he said.

The developer survey also included some other points:

• Developers believe that by 2015, they’ll be writing a lot of mobile apps for devices beyond the smartphone and tablet. The most popular predictions were for the TV (83.5 percent), connected cars (74 percent), game consoles (71.2 percent), Google Glass (67.1 percent), and foldable screens (69.1 percent).
• Apple is the top developer platform for Titanium developers with 85 percent of developers very interested in building apps for iOS smartphones and 83 percent very interested in building iPad apps.
• Research in Motion’s traction with developers hit a new low with 9 percent very interested in building BlackBerry apps compared to nearly 40 percent in January 2011.
• Android support is also slipping with developer interest in Android smartphone apps falling to 76 percent while tablet app interest has slid to 66 percent.

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The partnership has the potential to kickstart a lot more location-aware apps. Appcelerator has 1.6 million iOS and Android developers, who use Titanium to create apps. Now, they can drop in Appcelerator’s tool kit into their apps to enable geo-triggered events.

For example, apps with Geoloqi can understand when someone has entered or left a predefined geo-fence — say, a coffee shop — using carrier signals, GPS, Wifi and indoor tracking systems. The apps can track a person’s location and push out messages or trigger actions based on where they are. Geoloqi can also provide app developers with location and dwell-time analytics on users.

Geoloqi made its first iOS and Android SDKs available in February, but the integration with Appcelerator opens up the service to a large existing community of developers who use Titanium to speed up their app development efforts. Appcelerator is giving new Titanium developers a two-month free trial when they register and download the Geoloqi Titanium module before the end of June.

The Appcelerator integration is the first partnership to go live for Geoloqi. It has also inked deals back in March with data aggregation platform Factual and  Locaid, a carrier location platform.

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Appcelerator surveyed 2,160 of its mobile developers on Nov. 2–3 and found that 49 percent of developers in North America were very interested in developing for the Kindle Fire, putting it just 4 percentage points behind the iPad’s initial interest scores from developers from a previous similar survey. Globally, the Kindle Fire (43 percent) came in second among Android tablets, behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab (56 percent), which has been out for a year.

Asked why they liked the Kindle Fire, developers cited the cheaper $199 price as the leading reason, followed by Amazon’s rich content ecosystem, its app store, target demographic and eCommerce integration. The results shouldn’t be too surprising, considering that Appcelerator developers back in January said price was the single most important factor for Android tablets hoping to compete against the iPad. Developers’ biggest worries with the Kindle Fire were fragmentation, lack of a camera and the absence of GPS. The survey was taken before Barnes & Noble announced the Nook Tablet.

The survey also found that Windows Phone 7 has now moved up to become the solid third-place platform behind iOS and Android among Appcelerator developers, distancing itself from BlackBerry, in which there has been declining interest. Windows Phone 7′s share of developer attention increased 8 percentage points to 38 percent, while interest in BlackBerry OS phones declined 7 points to 21 percent, and interest in PlayBook QNX-based tablets dropped 6 points to 13 percent. There is more curiosity about the new Lumia Windows Phone 7 device from Nokia (28 percent) than there is about existing BlackBerry options.

The reason for the boost in Windows Phone 7 optimism comes down to the deal between Microsoft and Nokia to put Windows Phone 7 on Nokia hardware. Almost half (48 percent) of developers said they were more interested in the WP7 platform because of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership.

IOS is still the top platform for developer interest, with 91 percent of respondents saying they are “very interested” in developing for the iPhone, followed by the iPad at 88 percent, which is consistent from the previous quarter. Interest in Android phones dropped by about 4 points to 83 percent, while tablets fell nearly 6 points to 68 percent. Interest in HTML5 held steady at 66 percent of developers interested in building HTML5 websites and web apps.

Interest in both the Kindle Fire and Windows Phone 7 still remains largely a bet based on future potential. We will have to see if both Amazon’s new tablet and Microsoft’s smartphone platform can live up to expectations. But at least for Appcelerator developers, they see enough there to be optimistic. The Kindle Fire results are especially interesting, because not many developers have been building Android tablet apps. Many haven’t seen the business case for it. But now, with 5 million Kindle Fires expected to be sold this year, that is clearly changing.

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The round announced today was led by Mayfield Fund, Red Hat and Translink Capital. Existing investors eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), Sierra Ventures and Storm Ventures — which put $9 million into the company last year — also participated. The total amount of money invested in the company to date is now $31.5 million.

As a testament to the huge popularity of apps, the company’s business model of working across both native and web platforms, and its acquisition strategy, Appcelerator has ballooned since it raised that last $9 million in October 2010.

At the time, the company’s platform was being used by 77,000 developers; today the company says that number is 1.6 million. A lot of that might mainly be down to the third of these factors: the company acquired web-app development platform Aptana in January of this year. Aptana had 1.5 million developers signed up to its services at the time.

That web-app push was further bolstered last week when Appcelerator acquired mobile gaming and HTML5 development platform, Particle Code.

To date, there have been some 30,000 apps developed on Appcelerator’s Titanium platform, according to GigaOm. That makes it one of the biggest players in this space, which is crowded with a number of other players who have also raised significant funding, such as Service2Media, which picked up $10 million in June for its cross-platform app development services.

While Appcelerator has definitely been making a push into web apps via its Aptana and Particle Code acquisitions, it has also benefited from partnering with third-parties to extend its activities in native platforms as well. Earlier this year the company inked a deal with Barnes & Nobel’s Nook to bring more app development targeted specifically at the bookseller’s tablet device.,

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The new money comes from Mayfield Fund, Translink Capital and Red Hat, with additional funding from existing investors eBay, Sierra Ventures and Storm Ventures, which ponied up $9 million a year ago. All told, Mountain View, Calif.-based Appcelerator has raised $31.5 million to date.

The company said its growth in the last year makes it the largest third-party app publisher of mobile applications in the Apple App Store and Android Market. Its mobile apps built on Titanium are now on 30 million devices, compared to 2.5 million a year ago. And it now has 1.6 million developers, thanks to the January acquisition of Aptana, which makes an integrated development environment for web applications.

Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing for Appcelerator, said the company is evolving to provide not just cross-platform tools for native apps but also HTML5 web apps, giving customers a way to easily get into native app stores and mobile browsers. Appcelerator will use the money to continue to develop Titanium and expand in Europe and Asia. Appcelerator will also use the funds to look at more acquisitions like the pick up last week of HTML5 web app specialist Particle Code.

Appcelerator is benefiting from the explosion in mobile apps, which is projected to go from 10.7 billion apps last year to 182.7 billion in 2015, according to IDC. It’s providing a good set of tools for developers and companies to push out mobile apps. Companies like NBC, eBay, Merck, GetGlue and others have turned to Appcelerator to build out mobile apps. It’s a good place to be as companies look for a simple way to hit multiple mobile platforms and also build out mobile-optimized websites.

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What companies like Appcelerator, Cotendo and Urban Airship–which all work with web developers to speed delivery of content to consumers–really worry about is the growing fragmentation of the software stack they work with as well as potentially hobbling patent litigation.

“Fragmentation is occurring at every layer for the stack–at the tools level, at the clouds themselves, the carriers and everything in between,” said Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator, speaking at the Mobilize 2011 conference on Monday.

Another, related issue, is the rise in IP litigation which makes nearly everyone nervous, said Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship. ”The lawyers are killing it, and it’s a bummer because it’s stifling innovation.”

Patent battles are raging around the industry with Oracle’s ongoing litigation against Google for its use of Java in Android, as a high-profile example.

Perhaps more mundane a problem is the age-old issue of latency.

As more people demand richer and more dynamic content, there’s a technology challenge, said Shlomi Gian, GM mobile services for Cotendo. “As content gets more dynamic and less cacheable, we still want it fast. We want it as fast as our desktop. today it takes 10 to 12 seconds to load a page. That gap is an opportunity,” Gian said.

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It’s called the Open Mobile Marketplace, and you’re going to need to know your way around mobile application development if you want to browse the aisles. Appcelerator thinks that the store will make it easier for software developers to use third-party technology in a consistent fashion across applications written for different platforms.

Some heavy hitters are on board with modules in the market, including PayPal (eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) is an investor in Appcelerator), Google’s AdMob and DoubleClick, Adobe’s Omniture (NSDQ: OMTR), and Salesforce.com. The store will also offer modules like OpenGL, graphics technology often used in games.

The ultimate platform for helping developers ensure consistency across multiple platforms will one day be the mobile Web, but the app model still holds the attention of most companies trying to target mobile devices because of the more powerful capabilities that can be delivered with a native app. The store is only open to current customers of Appcelerator, who are generally Web developers looking to build native mobile apps without having to learn a new set of technologies.

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Developers who use Titanium Studio will now be able to shop in Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace, where they can find cross-platform software tools and services that they can easily plug into their apps. If they need to integrate advertising on their different mobile apps, for example, they can drop in a module from AdMob or Millennial, or if they need other cloud back-end services for messaging or payments, they can use Twilio or PayPal. One integration, which can take minutes, will enable all of their Titanium apps. Appcelerator will talk more about the marketplace at its CODESTRONG Developer Conference on Monday.

Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace is launching with more than 50 initial modules, including app templates, design elements and cloud extensions. There are also gaming modules that include Gamekit, OpenGL for graphics and Box2D for physics. Companies with their own apps, such as social TV and media service GetGlue, can also offer its check-in service in the marketplace so other apps can integrate GetGlue’s check-in functionality. A full list of modules can be found here.

Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator’s VP of Marketing, told me the new marketplace was a logical next step for the company, which started selling its own premium extensions like Facebook integration to developers earlier this year. Now it’s filling a need for both developers and software makers, who can do business in the marketplace. Developers can get tools that are easy to implement across multiple apps, allowing them to scale up quickly, while software vendors can tap a ready-made audience of developers to get their products out. Appcelerator, for its part, will take in 30 percent of sales in the marketplace. Said Schwarzhoff:

On a daily basis you see some new company launches with an SDK and or API set and you can launch, but how do you recruit developers? We did that first; we got developers first and now have a marketplace for the capabilities coming out each day. It’s a recognition of the explosion in mobility with 700,000 apps in the app stores, you need to identify ways to differentiate apps in stores. You need a healthy ecosystem of components to add value in new interesting ways.

Appcelerator will distribute modules for free or offer to sell them for a onetime fee or with monthly and annual subscriptions. Software providers can also offer services for free and monetize on the back end by charging particular users who use their services.

Schwarzhoff said the market can become a virtuous cycle. As more vendors offer services, it can attract more developers, which in turn creates a bigger market for module providers. He said the ultimate goal is to help developers succeed, which he said can be beneficial for everyone. And that’s how he expects Appcelerator to grow, by being a useful marketplace for the larger mobile ecosystem.

It’s a savvy move by Appcelerator, which has helped many developers and companies launch their mobile apps across multiple platforms. And now it sees that it doesn’t need to provide all the tools itself. It can be like Apple and make good money by being a software marketplace; only instead of mobile users being the end consumers, the developers are.

Appcelerator is taking advantage of the boom in mobile apps and the exploding opportunity in providing mobile development services, which is projected to grow to $100 billion by 2015 by one estimate. Appsfire recently reported that there have been 1 million iOS and Android apps developed to date. That number is only going to grow, and that means big money for Appcelerator and a host of others who can tap into this opportunity.

You can hear more about mobile app development at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on Sept. 26 and 27 in San Francisco.

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