Handango

Handango is an online store that sells mobile software. Handango offers worldwide distribution, support, and e-commerce services to its partners. Company's customers include consumers, software developers, mobile operators, and original equipment manufacturers. Supported mobile devices include Android devices, Palm handhelds, Windows Mobile devices, Symbian OS devices, and BlackBerry devices.

Handango InHand, available since 2003 for Symbian UIQ, since 2004 for Windows Mobile and Palm OS, since 2005 for Blackberry and since 2006 for Symbian S60, is an on-device application store for finding, installing and buying software for your mobile device. Application download and purchasing are completed directly on the device so sync with a computer is not necessary. Description, rating and screenshot are available for any application. Software for using Handango InHand is available for free for Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian UIQ & S60, Blackberry, Android. Handango pionereed this on-air business model for smartphones which achieved great success some years later with similar Apple Inc.'s App Store and Google's Android Market.

On February 23, 2010, Jud Bowman of PocketGear, a Durham, North Carolina supplier of software and games for mobile phones, announced his company had acquired Handango, making PocketGear third behind Apple Inc. and Google in the app market. While PocketGear will remain in Durham, the company will keep Handango offices in the Dallas, Texas area. Bowman started PocketGear in 1999 when he was still a teenager, selling it to the company that is now Motricity, but then buying back the smart phones business in 2008 when Motricity moved from Durham to the Seattle area. Bowman remains a Motricity investor.

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