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Handango

Consumer Services · Durham, United States · Founded 1998

Handango emerged in 1999 as a pioneering force in the nascent mobile content market, establishing one of the first online software stores for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones. The company was founded by Randy Eisenman, who established the venture while serving as a partner at the multi-billion-dollar private investment firm Q Investments, L.P., which incubated Handango. Eisenman's background as a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he focused on technology and media investments, provided a strong foundation for his vision for the company. He was joined by CEO Laura Rippy in November 1999, an executive who had previously co-founded MSN HomeAdvisor.com and MSN Sidewalk.com during a six-year tenure at Microsoft. The company's core business was the global distribution of mobile applications. Handango operated as a marketplace, connecting tens of thousands of software developers with a broad consumer base. Its revenue model was primarily based on a revenue-sharing agreement with developers, initially a 70/30 split which was later adjusted to 60/40. The platform was device and platform-agnostic, offering a vast catalog of software for a wide range of operating systems including Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry, and eventually Android. Handango's customers were not just individual consumers but also mobile operators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), for whom it provided e-commerce services and support. A key product was the "Handango InHand" on-device application, launched in 2003. This service allowed users to browse, purchase, and install software directly onto their mobile devices without needing to sync with a computer, a significant convenience at the time. The company is credited with introducing several industry firsts, such as a self-service developer portal and the implementation of digital rights management (DRM) with Nokia. In February 2010, amid a shifting market landscape dominated by the rise of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market, Handango was acquired by its competitor, PocketGear, Inc. This merger created what was then the world's largest cross-platform, independent app store, combining their catalogs to over 140,000 titles. Following the acquisition, the combined entity was rebranded as Appia a year later and pivoted to a white-label app store platform, leading to the shutdown of the Handango website in 2013. Keywords: mobile app store, PDA software, smartphone applications, digital distribution, Handango InHand, Randy Eisenman, Laura Rippy, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, BlackBerry apps, mobile content delivery, application marketplace, software distribution, PocketGear, Appia, mobile commerce, developer portal, DRM, pre-iPhone app store