Yahoo has made no secret of its ambitions and advances in mobile, earlier this month reporting 450 million monthly active users and search and display mobile ad revenues growing 100%. In CEO Marissa Mayer’s words, Yahoo is a “mobile first company.”

 Now, sources say that Yahoo has closed in on an acquisition that could potentially boost its role in mobile further: it is buying Flurry, the mobile app analytics and advertising startup, with a price that could be anywhere between $200 and $300 million. Kara Swisher is also reporting that Yahoo is interested in the company.

 Founded in 2005 and headquartered in San Francisco, Flurry is one of the largest companies in the area of app analytics.

 It’s an area that has seen some consolidation. For example, Onavo was acquired by Facebook. AppAnnie has acquired Distimo. And Twitter has also made a number of acquisitions that have boosted its mobile analytics capabilities.

 In Flurry’s own words, “Since the launch of the smartphone, Flurry has helped grow the app economy into a $100+ billion industry.” By that, it’s referring to the fact that it works with some 170,000 developers, picking up data from 150 billion app sessions each month, to provide information to app publishers about their audiences, app usage and app performance, providing insights to improve how apps work.

 And to improve how apps make money. Flurry uses that data, for example, to power its advertising platform, which is used by brands to target specific audiences on apps in Flurry’s network, and by developers to monetise their apps with more relevant inventory.

 Specifically, what Flurry could give to Yahoo is not just a boost in mobile advertising revenues, but, as Yahoo builds out its ad tech business, a more central role in how others are monetising and using mobile.

 Effectively, this gives Yahoo another strong string to its mobile bow: while it builds out its own apps and app inventory, and advertising to run across them, Yahoo could be bringing in a platform that could become the go-to place for other mobile players to boost and develop their own app businesses.

 Yahoo says that the 450 million monthly active mobile users it recorded in Q2 was over 100% growth over two years (in 2012 the figure was 200 million). Mayer, in her earnings report remarks, also noted that the time spent by its audience on mobile was up by 79% in the last year. She said that the company has “more than 400 Yahoos working exclusively on building iOS and Android apps.”

Source: techcrunch.com