When it comes to mobile app stores, there’s iTunes and then there is everyone else. PocketGear which bills itself as the “World’s Largest Mobile App Store,” closed a $15 million series B round. The round was led by Trident Capital, with the Blackberry Partners Fund and Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s personal investment vehicle, TomorrowVentures.
PocketGear isn’t the prettiest app store in the world, but it sells apps for practically every smartphone platform except one (that would be the other App Store). PocketGear sells apps for Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and Java phones. It distributes more than 140,000 paid and free titles, and claims that it has sold more than $2.5 billion worth of apps total (which would make it bigger than iTunes, which just recently crossed the $1 billion mark).
Obviously, there is a large and growing market for mobile apps across multiple smartphones that are not made by Apple, and PocketGear aims to be a one-stop shop for all of those apps. PocketGear is based in Durham, NC and was bought out from mobile phone software platform Motricity by Jud Bowman, who was CTO and co-founder of Motricity and now acts as CEO of PocketGear. Previous investors include Noro-Moseley Partners and Wakefield Group.
Appia is the world’s largest open app marketplace and white label storefront platform, supporting all operating systems and handsets. Ranked #15 on the Wall Street Journal’s 2011 list of Top 50 Venture-backed companies, Appia powers app storefronts for partners reaching more than 300 million mobile subscribers in 175 countries. Partners include Opera, Vodafone India, Vodacom South Africa, Zedge, Myxer and Samsung. The Appia Developer Program provides partners with a ready to launch catalog of over 140,000 paid and free...
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