Urban Airship expands push-notification system to Android

Urban Airship Inc. has released a new push notification system for mobile apps running on Google Inc.’s Android devices and announced a pair of new customers on the platform.
The Portland, Ore.-based company has sent more than 2.5 billion push notifications thus far — a daily average of 15 million push notifications — and has now expanded to Android to give developers an alternative outside of Google’s native C2DM system. ESPN and shopkick have both signed on as early customers of Urban Airship’s Embedded Push solution.
Urban Airship’s platform also enables developers to support in-app purchasing and subscriptions through the same API. The company is also expanding the metrics it can provide to developers to help them determine the best business model and practices based on different campaigns’ effectiveness.
“We’re seeing more mission-critical apps with sophisticated messaging needs — in emergency services, in the enterprise — that rely on an always-on, secure mobile infrastructure for message delivery,” CEO Scott Kveton said in a prepared statement. “Urban Airship has invested heavily in its back-end infrastructure so it can offer developers the robust, scalable and stable messaging-delivery platform necessary to extend the reach of their mobile offerings.”