Berlin — It might seem a tall order to persuade people to spend as much to learn a language on their smartphone as it costs to subscribe to a music streaming or video-on-demand service. But Berlin-based start-up Babbel says that, after 10 years in business, it has finally cracked the US market, where sales more than doubled last year, and are on track soon to eclipse its home market in central Europe. Babbel, the top-grossing language app worldwide, charges $8.95 a month for its most popular three-month deal that features interactive drills and conversational practice using speech recognition. Its subscription business contrasts with that of US-based rival Duolingo’s free, ad-supported model. "Around June we noticed there’s a flywheel going," co-founder and CEO Markus Witte said of the US market in a recent interview. "We know that this market is big enough for us to grow there for a quite a while." Key was the hiring a year ago of Julie Hansen, previously of Business Insider, to le...
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