2015 was a huge year for the Ionic team in Madison, as we continue to build Ionic into the most popular way web developers and designers transition from building websites and blogs, to building powerful mobile apps and mobile websites.
In March we closed a $2.6M round lead by Lightbank and Founder Collective, bringing our total to $3.7M, to build out our fast growing mobile development toolkit and mobile backend services. We kindled partnerships with IBM, Microsoft, and Google, changed our name from Drifty to "Ionic", expanded our office, grew the team, and launched a number of new products.
In 2015, Ionic developers created over 1.3 million mobile apps, a 300% increase from 2014, with some notable ones being the New York City MTA Bus Time app, Adobe Social, Card.com, Meerkat Movies, and Predictabl (official sports prediction game of football clubs like Real Madrid and Chelsea). Several more apps and mobile websites are in the works across the Fortune 100 and major retail brands around the world.
The Ionic developer community grew like crazy in 2015, with over 120 community-run meetup groups popping up across the globe. Every month Ionic developer tools are installed over 320,000 times, with 5000+ new apps created every single day.
We're proud that developers tell us Ionic put Madison on the map for open source and mobile development, and we're looking forward to growing our Madison presence as we expand and open our first SF office in 2016.
As we continue to grow in 2016, we're excited to be working with some great Madison-based development shops like Bendyworks and Mobile Igniter that now specialze in building Ionic apps. We're always looking for more great partners, so please get in touch if you're interested in joining the Ionic ecosystem.
From all of us at Ionic, thanks for supporting us through the years, and if you're looking to build a great mobile app or mobile website, or you're a web developer/designer looking to get into mobile, we hope you give Ionic a try! Also, we're hiring for a number of positions, so get in touch!
Check out the Full 2015 Recap on our blog.