Toca Boca: Almost 100 million downloads in just four years

Jefferson Graham | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Toca Boca's new mobile app for kids Swedish firm Toca Boca has quietly become the n. 3 developer of mobile apps for kids, behind Disney and Nickelodeon. Jefferson Graham swings by its San Francisco outpost for a report, as it launches its latest app, Toca Life: City

SAN FRANCISCO — In just a few short years, this little Swedish company, Toca Boca, has quietly become the third-most popular developer of kids apps, with nearly 100 million downloads, just behind powerhouses Disney and Nickelodeon.

"It's been quite a ride," says Toca founder and CEO Bjorn Jeffery. "And sometimes I think about it myself--I wonder how we ended up here."

Give credit to making apps that kids like. The latest, Toca Life: City, is out today, for Apple devices at first. In the game, some 28 characters go out to eat, to the barber and to work, in the city, while players dress and feed them.

The app is a result of more than 10,000 requests from players of previous games.

"I wish you had a pet store, I wish you could go to the hair salon, all those kind of things," Jeffery says.

The company is based in Stockholm, where the developers create the games, while marketing is done here in the city.

The firm was born back home, as part of print publisher the Bonnier Group, and spun off. "We're still a little, mini division of a family owned, seventh-generation, 200-year-old media company from Sweden," Jeffery says.

One that, at an average $2.99 per pop, has grossed nearly $300 million in just four years.

Toca Boca, which means "touch the mouth" in Spanish, lost money the first year, "but I was still figuring out what we were going to do. And then once I figured it out, we've done pretty well since then."

He credits the success of the firm to focus.

"We only do apps. So every day, everyone goes to work and only thinks about 'how do we make a really really great app?' he says. "Whereas I think a lot of others sometimes do an app a little bit on the side, like the main thing is a movie or the main thing is a toy. Our main thing is the app itself. I think a lot of kids notice because quality matters for kids just as much as for adults."

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