Cinemur has announced today a €2 Million round of funding from private investors, which they will use to accelerate the growth of their mobile app, as well as develop their B2B offer. The iPhone app racked up 200K downloads and 170K registered users in just 5 months, an impressive growth for a French-language application, and they plan to keep going, potentially threatening incumbent AlloCiné, who has previously corned the film trailer/times/recommendation market online.
The new round of funding will help the company, which already counts 10 employees, to get its Android app launched, as well as to bring its film recommendation engine to new types of content, such as TV series. While they did not explicitly state in what form this new content would be displayed (connected TV?), their B2B ambitions shed a bit of light onto where they would like to take the company. Currently working with two of France’s biggest film distributors, MK2 and BAC films, Cinemur hopes to become a key distribution and promotion channel for film professionals, with analytics tools being built today.
Personally, I’ve tried out the app for the past few months, and haven’t been entirely impressed with it. It’s beautiful, much like the web version, but I still find myself using IMDB or looking a local movie theaters on AlloCiné or directly on the theater site in order to see what’s playing in my area. I’m definitely not announcing which films I’ve seen, though I can see the appeal to do so – if you’re going to share with your friends a film you liked/hated, why not also store on a service that can use that information to better recommend movies to you.
What are your thoughts? A game-changer, or just a pretty app?