James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.











Mobile technology service provider Kii has launched Kii Analytics, which claims to be unique in that it is the first fully customisable in-app analytics tool on the market.

The analytics tool can be worked in conjunction with mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) Kii Cloud – also released today out of beta – allowing developers to run custom metrics intuitively and with flexibility.

Other features of the nascent tool include being able to create multiple dimensions per metric, utilising a Developer Dashboard, as well as being able to mix and match between current analytics offerings.

This could be a major step forward for app developers looking for the Holy Grail – visibility and monetisation.

“We really think, ultimately, it’s the app developer who really knows the key metrics for their own app because only the app developer knows what they’re looking for,” said Phani Pandrangi, VP product at Kii, adding: “They need to understand what’s happening in real application terms so they can improve functionality.

“In today’s market, there are lots of offerings which say they’re analytics, but the mode of operation is that you have to insert their SDK into the app, and you have to send whatever data to their analytics server for it to aggregate.

“With Kii, because analytics is done in Kii Cloud, you can go to our developer portal, even after the app is deployed and define what metrics you want. The majority of times, app developers don’t know what metrics they want at the time they’ve created or deployed the app,” Pandrangi said.

The belief here is that this product hits a gap in the market. “No other analytics offering is as flexible or insightful as Kii Analytics,” said Kii CEO Masanari Arai in a prepared statement. “Kii puts the app developer squarely in control – allowing the developer to define and track metrics that make sense to them – in the terms that make sense to them.”

“It fills a huge gap in terms of visibility for developers,” adds Pandrangi.

Kii is attempting to change the face of app analytics for developers. By allowing more flexible metrics, it gives developers the full picture of analytics data.

Of course, Kii isn’t the only analytics firm to be utilising a cloud product. Flurry has its FlurryAppCloud, and last week announced user acquisition and crash analytics to its portfolio, competing with the likes of Crashlytics, recently bought out by Twitter, and Apsalar.

Kii Analytics is going to be showcased at Apps World North America, in San Francisco on February 7-8, where Kii is exhibiting. Find out more about Apps World here.