• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 12, 2010

Mobile app analytics firm Flurry on Tuesday is expected to announce that it has closed a Series B financing round of $7 million. Led by venture capital firm InterWest Partners, the round included existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Draper Richards.

In December, San Francisco-based Flurry announced plans to merge with rival app analytics provider Pinch Media. By combining, the companies said they would cover 80% of iPhone and iPod touch devices and two-thirds of Android phones.

The merged company adopted the Flurry name, and agreed to maintain offices in San Francisco and New York.

Through its analytics software embedded in apps by developers, Flurry collects data such as frequency and length of user sessions, a user's geographic location, and carrier versus Wi-Fi access from about two-thirds of all iPhone and Android apps. To date, more that 15,000 developers have integrated Flurry's tracking software within their apps.

The success of Apple's App Store, which offers over 100,000 titles and boasts 2 billion downloads, has led to serious excitement over apps across various devices and operating systems, including Android, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Nokia.

"Smartphone application download growth is skyrocketing like nothing in recent consumer tech history, dwarfing even early Internet adoption," said Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf. "Flurry is positioned to play a significant role in leveraging the measurement of consumer behavior to accelerate the sale of applications and virtual goods."

A recent forecast from ABI Research predicted that the 2.9 billion mobile apps downloaded in 2009 would increase to 5 billion in 2014. Meanwhile, Piper Jaffray Senior Analyst Gene Munster recently forecast that Apple will sell an additional 36 million iPhones in 2010 -- a 40% increase from 2009 estimates.

Prior to its merger with Flurry, New York-based Pinch had received seed venture backing from investors including Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and veteran Internet entrepreneur Dave Morgan.

Flurry had previously raised $3.5 million in a first round of financing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Borealis Ventures.

In December, Flurry formed a partnership with comScore to jointly provide mobile application-tracking data. The resulting analytics service, offered as part of comScore's mobile media solutions, combine the Web measurement firm's panel-based information with Flurry's real-time usage data.