Appcelerator raises $9M for mobile commerce

Application development platform partners with PayPal/eBay to deliver mobile commerce apps

Appcelerator, an open source application development platform, announced Tuesday that it has secured a $9 million Series B round of funding, led by Sierra Ventures, with participation from eBay and existing investors Storm Ventures and Larry Augustin. Founded in 2007, the Mountain View, CA-startup has raised $15.2 million to date.

Along with the funding, Appcelerator also signed a mobile partner program agreement with PayPal, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. In the first half of 2011, Appcelerator will offer Titanium+Commerce, a customizable template application for mobile transactions, to more than eight million PayPal merchants.

Accessible from a wide variety of mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, Titanium+Commerce enables merchants to not only accept mobile payments, but also forge a closer relationship with the customer. Through the app, a merchant might offer deals or rewards to the customer. For developers, Titanium+Commerce is a good start for a mobile commerce app, but the best part is its customizability.

Titanium+Commerce is available today in beta.

Before this deal, Appcelerator primarily focused its efforts on the Titanium platform, which helps developers and businesses easily create applications for a plethora of devices. More than 77,000 developers have adopted the platform to create 1,000 new mobile and desktop apps each month, according to Appcelerator, making the company the second largest publisher of applications on Apple’s App Store.

With today’s news, the startup is tapping into another huge market.

eBay and PayPal combined will see $2 billion in mobile transactions this year, according to Appcelerator. As more and more users embrace mobile for their daily needs and services, there’s little doubt remaining that mobile commerce is a rapidly growing industry. Next year, they’re projecting $5 billion in mobile transactions.

Appcelerator says it will use the new funds specifically to fuel the growth of Titanium+Commerce and to expand into new markets.