App-testing company Burstly acquired by Apple

Apple on Friday acquired Burstly, a startup that offers app-testing and analytics. The company confirmed the news to CNET, but didn’t explain what it purchased Burstly for. It’s not unusual to see a company the size of Apple regularly scoop up smaller pawns, as it happens often throughout the year, typically to fortify and enhance behind-the-scenes technology. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” Apple said.

Apple is said to have acquired the app-testing and analytics startup Burstly and on Friday all but confirmed it: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” an Apple spokesperson told CNET. Burstly is the operator of popular developer services like TestFlight, which lets app makers deploy an app to a small amount of users for field testing before wider release. That way, developers can work out kinks and monitor things like in-app purchases and the app’s durability against crashing, without having to put the product up for full release on an app store.