(Bloomberg) - ATP Capital, manager of the BlackBerry Partners Fund, raised $150 million for a new fund to invest in startups that develop applications for a range of mobile-phone platforms.
“We have been agnostic from day one,” Co-Managing Partner Kevin Talbot said yesterday in a phone interview. That means investing in early-stage businesses based on Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iOS operating system and Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android platform as well as Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)’s BlackBerry. “If you look at our portfolio, you’ll see far more broad horizontal plays. That’s how you build big companies.”
Venture-capital firms are investing more in software developers as their apps become increasingly important to consumers when choosing among mobile phones and tablet computers. Faster sales growth and a wider variety of apps have attracted more developers to Apple than other systems.
Eighty-nine percent of developers in a recent survey by Appcelerator and IDC said they were “very interested” in developing for the iPhone. For Android phones, the figure was 79 percent, while only 16 percent of developers polled were “very interested” in building apps for the BlackBerry phone.
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