Microsoft has announced today that it has acquired HockeyApp, but the terms of the deal were not disclosed. While the name of the company implies ties to the sports world, the company actually makes it easy to test and distribute apps for all of the major mobile platforms for beta testing.
Microsoft had been using the service internally for some time, specifically with Skype, and the acquisition makes a lot of sense for the Redmond-based company.
HockeyApp does more than make it easy to distribute apps for testing, they also provide detailed crash stats and other analytics too. The service will bundle nicely with the Visual Studio Online Application Insights service that the company offers too.
It"s easy to see why Microsoft would want to acquire a company that makes distributing apps easy, as the company is all about increasing productivity for users of all backgrounds, including - in this case - developers. By making Microsoft"s products the easiest to use for developing on any platform, this becomes a key differentiator versus using software provided by Apple or Google.
Source: Microsoft