From the press release:

“Our vision is to facilitate an open app store ecosystem that supports every mobile device, every application, and every carrier network globally,” said Jud Bowman, President and CEO of PocketGear. “By combining the two largest independent app store companies, we’re creating significantly more scale and value for all of the stakeholders in the open app store ecosystem.”

It will be interesting to see just how this plays out.  Clearly Mobihand and their huge presence in the smartphone community had to have some kind of effect on this deal.  Independent app stores will definitely have their work cut out for them but as long as smartphone sales continue to rise so will app sales.