Apple pays $5.6M to acquire Italian app backend startup Stamplay

Apple is rumored to have acquired Stamplay, an Italian startup that aims to simplify cloud-based development of apps for businesses, with Apple believed to have paid around 5 million euros ($5.6 million) for the company.

Stamplay specializes in providing a backend for developers to run their app from the cloud. Using a web-based editor, the service can combine together multiple APIs for payments, notifications, messaging, and other elements, with Stamplay handling the majority of the coding.

Newspaper Il Sore 24 Ore reports the acquisition is valued at 5 million euro, with the purchase requiring the founders to become Apple employees, though it is unclear if it is an acquihire or a complete acquisition of the business.

Founders Nicola Mattina and Guiliano Iacobelli grew the company to have three offices in Rome, London, and San Francisco, and have received about 800,000 euro in funding. The company also won Visa's "Everywhere Initiative" project in 2016, gaining it work from the card issuer.

While there are most of the typical signs of an Apple-connected purchase, such as the firm's website offering little content aside from a basic page, there is no official confirmation that a purchase has occurred. As of yet, Apple has not offered comment at all, and so far, hasn't provided AppleInsider the standard boilerplate about buying smaller technology companies.

Apple's interest in Stamplay is likely to be purely to help developers produce iOS apps. Many apps do require some sort of backend system, a cloud server for managing user data and to perform functions, and it is an area that is usually overlooked by those new to app development, something Stamplay could certainly help improve.

4 Comments

anome 1545 comments · 16 Years

About 5 years ago

Another step on the way to my idea of "Pro as a Service" where an ARM-based client machine connects to Pro-level apps running on an x86 box in the cloud.

Come to think of it, Google's Stadia is basically the same idea, just for games rather than Pro apps.

On the other hand, it might have been just a acqui-hire, and maybe they just want them to develop the back end for their increasing services portfolio. But I still think "Pro as a Service" is going to be a thing.

fastasleep 6450 comments · 14 Years

anome said:

Another step on the way to my idea of "Pro as a Service" where an ARM-based client machine connects to Pro-level apps running on an x86 box in the cloud.
Come to think of it, Google's Stadia is basically the same idea, just for games rather than Pro apps.

Not really, Stadia is streaming video of an app running on another server. These are various backend tools for a locally-running app, just centralized and simplified in one place.

elijahg 2822 comments · 18 Years

anome said:

Another step on the way to my idea of "Pro as a Service" where an ARM-based client machine connects to Pro-level apps running on an x86 box in the cloud.
Come to think of it, Google's Stadia is basically the same idea, just for games rather than Pro apps.
On the other hand, it might have been just a acqui-hire, and maybe they just want them to develop the back end for their increasing services portfolio. But I still think "Pro as a Service" is going to be a thing.

Good luck uploading then streaming raw 4/8k video to a cloud provider.

They dumbed down Pages, Numbers and Keynote to make them web-accessible, professionals don't want dumbed down software, they want more features to make their workflow easier. Just look at the backlash when dumbed down FCP X was released. I'm not sure Apple really recovered FCP's marketshare after that. Unfortunately it seems more and more pros are abandoning Apple, you used to see quite a few cheesegrater Mac Pros in editing studios, now they use Avid on a PC. Don't think I've ever seen the trashcan one in the wild.

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