PocketGear today announced that they had bought Handango, creating the world’s largest cross-platform mobile app store. The new app store will have 140,000 free and paid apps for Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Palm, Linux and Java phones.

“Our vision is to facilitate an open app-store ecosystem that supports every mobile device, every application, and every carrier network globally,” PocketGear chief executive Jud Bowman said in a statement.

“By combining the two largest independent app-store companies, we’re creating significantly more scale and value for all the stakeholders in the open app-store ecosystem.”

PocketGear’s move is widely viewed as risky as currently there are too many app stores in the market, and most of the major operating system has their own Apps stores. Users tend to download apps from the default “app store” application loaded on their phone. Currently, the world’s largest mobile app store is Apple’s iPhone, which has about 150, 000 apps. Its rival, Android, has about 20, 000 apps.

PockeGear didn’t disclose how much it pay for Handango.