Austin's AVAI Mobile Solutions, LLC announced Monday it will be the app provider for the many music fests of C3 Presents, which include Austin City Limits Festival and Lollapalooza.
Privately held AVAI didn't disclose finances of the deal, but said it hopes to be the long-term partner on C3's apps. "This is a strategic partnership. We're going to be building and managing these apps hopefully for years," said AVAI Chief Executive Rand Arnold.
Arnold said AVAI began working with C3 late last year and is already rolling out the first apps for the concert events company, including apps for Lollapalooza Brazil, Lollapalooza Chile, Lollapalooza Argentina and Auckland City Limits in New Zealand. AVAI will work with C3 on a minimum of 20 apps in the next year, Arnold said.
The company, which has about 40 employees, 35 of them in Austin, creates platforms for companies such as C3 to build their mobile sites and apps upon, a set of tools Arnold describes as, "Wordpress on steroids for native mobile."
While AVAI's apps have capability for in-demand mobile features such as heat maps (to let C3 know what app and festival features are most popular) and geofencing (for, say, sending messages in a specific geographic area), simplicity is key for some of these apps, Arnold said.
"It's a smart group over there (at C3) and they know their audience," he said. "Some apps get more complicated and sophisticated with Easter eggs and hidden functions. Our audience is people who want to go experience music and they've usually had a beer or two. It has to be easy to find the artists they want."
The partnership is meant to make it easier for C3 to build its own apps using the platform and to update those apps as often as needed.
AVAI has built or helped build more than 700 mobile apps including apps for The Smithsonian and the Daytona 500. The company has been operating out of Austin since 1999 and began focusing on mobile software in 2008.
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