UPDATED 05:14 EDT / AUGUST 22 2012

Consumer Apps Prove to be a Big VC Investment

Consumer apps has proved to be one of the largest venture capital investments for the first half of this year, worth $1.009 billion in value, with $3.9 billion invested in mobile companies worldwide.

Non-software, like devices and infrastructure, still remains one of the most valuable investments in mobile when taking a look at the top 10 biggest investments. One of the biggest deals in venture capital has been for Xiaomi Tech that received $216 million from undisclosed investors. The first company in the consumer app category that received investments was Evernote, that received $70 million.

Other big-time consumer names that showed up on the list include: AnchorFree, that received $52 million and Foursquare, Instagram and SoundCloud, all receiving $50 million.

Investors have been interested in consumer apps since the growing popularity of smartphones and tablets, along with the apps that are able to run on them.

In total, there have been a total of 166 VC investments in consumer mobile apps out of the 479 investments total in the first half of the year.

Millennial Media, the mobile ad network company, increased their number of apps enabled on their platform by around 17%, which is over 35,000 apps. What makes this company stand out from its competitors is the fact that they are not stuck to only one platform. Millennial Media recently released a software development it for Windows Phone 7.

One issue with the reporting method is the fact that companies such as Dropbox and Box that offer consumer mobile services, but are not consumer companies. Labeling companies and putting them into specific categories can be a problem because categories such as enterprise apps or non-mobile-first companies could potentially be making more money than reports suggest.

“Overall we believe that the lines between mobile and not-mobile are blurring, as everything is mobile to at least some degree today,” said Rajeev Chand, MD and head of research at Rutberg.


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