No, Branch isn’t taking over the development and distribution of Nova Launcher. Kevin Barry, the creator of your favorite third-party launcher, is still in charge of the app. Barry has assured that Nova’s direction and development will remain unchanged under the new ownership. But you can certainly expect some minor changes. However, before going into that, let us look into what Branch does. It offers app developers a platform to manage and improve their creations. More than 100,000 apps have used its services over the years, including Adobe, BuzzFeed, and Yelp. These apps cumulatively have over three billion monthly users across the globe. Branch wants to use Nova as a testing platform. The company will leverage the latter’s massive user base to test out new analytics features before making them available to its clients. In a blog post, Barry has compared the relationship between Branch and Nova with Google’s Pixel smartphones. Similar to how Google needs Pixel smartphones to “build Android,” Branch would use Nova to build its analytics platform. The company has also acquired Sesame Search — the search results platform that was recently integrated into Nova — for the same purpose.
Nova will see some changes under Branch
Barry says Branch’s data analytics expertise will help Nova grow over time as it will have more data on what its users want. But for that to happen, the app will need to implement some changes. Most notably, Nova will now release more experimental features than before. These features may be unstable but will push more data to Branch. Nova will also start A/B testing. If you’re unaware, this means some users will get new features while others wouldn’t or get a different version of the same feature. Once again, this is to gather more data on what users want. Barry says he avoided A/B testing in the past. Thankfully, Nova will not see any changes to its monetization strategy. Branch is reportedly not interested in changing how Nova makes money. So the free version of the launcher will likely remain ad-free for the foreseeable future. We will keep a close eye on future Nova releases and would let you know if we see any major changes directly stemming from this acquisition. “My first priority is still to the Nova community and maintaining Nova Launcher as the launcher it’s always been, but I’m excited to bring new features of bigger scope to Nova and contribute to a larger platform,” Barry said in a press release from Branch.
