.

FreeRange acquired by Kansas City’s Handmark

Rick Turoczy on February 9, 2009

FreeRangePortland-based FreeRange—one of the leaders of the Portland mobile scene with customers like the Blazers, paidContent, and The Wall Street Journal—has been acquired by Handmark, a mobile entertainment company headquartered in Kansas City, MO.

Last year, I wrote:

If any company is the “founding father” of the burgeoning Portland mobile scene, FreeRange is it. With customers like the Wall Street Journal and the Portland Trail Blazers—and one of the most impressive mobile feed readers on the market—FreeRange is sure to keep Portland associated with mobile apps for a long time to come.

Oopie. Allow me to rephrase that. “Handmark is sure to keep Portland….”

According to the release, FreeRange is a “strategic addition” for Handmark, which has been recognized for its “mobile development expertise and management of a variety of desktop and on-device mobile stores full of the industry’s best games, applications and ringtones.”

“This is an exciting turning point for our company and we are proud to become part of the Handmark organization,” said Jon Maroney, FreeRange CEO. “Handmark has built a large network of happy customers across a wide range of mobile devices. This offers a great opportunity for FreeRange partners to expand their reach, adding tremendous value to content delivered via our publishing platform.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For more information on the acquisition, see the FreeRange blog.

(Hat tip Jason Grigsby)

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy

  1. eBay hits the “Buy It Now” button on Critical Path, joins Portland mobile development scene « Silicon Florist December 15, 2010 at 2:42 pm

    […] like the Freerange acquisition and Stumptown Game Machine acquisition before them, Critical Path found a specific mobile app niche […]

  2. Jon Maroney February 9, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Hi Rick –

    Thanks for your comments. Yes, we’re very excited and FreeRange/Handmark plan to not only keep Portland associated with mobile application for a long time, we plan to increase that association. We’ll be adding new people to our team here- software engineers for all the handsets we support, as well as expand our sales team. Part of Handmark’s interest in FreeRange was that we have such a strong and vibrant developer community here in Portland.

    Jon Maroney
    FreeRange Communications
    jmaroney@freerangeinc.com

Comments are closed.