The Skinny blog is written by Rick Smith, editor and co-founder of WRAL Tech Wire and business editor of WRAL.com.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Sometimes an infographic is worth a thousand words – or more – in explaining best just how a company is doing. Such is certainly the case for Durham-based Appia, which is becoming the world’s marketplace from mobile device application developers.

On Wednesday, the Jud Bowman-led company disclosed some new tools designed to drive more dollars to apps developers in the world of Android, Symbian, Apple iOS, BlackBerry and more. We reported that news. (Read here.)

Bowman, a serial entrepreneur dating back to his high school days, left a company he once co-founded, Motricity, in 2008. He wanted to start a firm that focused on the fast-emerging smartphone market, PocketGear, buying Motricity’s smartphone business. Just a year ago, Bowman renamed the venture Appia and chose a new direction. 

“Over the past few years we’ve been focused on building out an end-to-end application store platform for carriers and handset manufacturers, and supplying content developers with the tools they need to take control of the marketing and distribution of their apps to as many consumer touch points as possible,” Bowman said in announcing the changes.

“As consumers increasingly look for alternatives to the native app stores, Appia intends to power those other stores and enable app creators to easily reach new customers,” he added.

Has the decision paid off?

As Appia noted astronomical growth over the past year in the news announcement, Motricity earlier this week reported more financial losses.

The impact of Appia’s growth is made starkly and impressively clear in an infographic that Appia posted at its Facebook page. We have the graphic posted with this story.

Here are some of the salient points:

  • 16 million users from 1 million users a year ago
  • Apps available now through its marketplace for 3,500 devices
  • Its custom-designed apps “store front” marketplaces service the world’s No. 2 (Vodafone) and No. 3 (America Movil) largest operator app stores
  • Appia customers download an app every five seconds
  • More than 400 million apps have been downloaded
  • Users are found in more than 200 countries
  • Appia’s advertising partners number 60 vs. 0 – that’z zero – a year ago

Is its advertising programs paying off for the developers and Appia? Some 15 million of the downloads over the past year have been “sponsored.”

And what would be your guesses for the top five countries were the most downloads have been made?

  1. U.S.
  2. India
  3. United Kingdom
  4. South Korea
  5. South Africa

Just a couple months ago, Appia announced a major expansion into Latin and South America.

So maybe Bowman will write a book in the future about how to be successful at business titled “The Appia Way.”