• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 30, 2011

Independent mobile app marketplace Appia (formerly PocketGear) has closed $10 million in third-round venture funding from Venrock. That brings the Durham, N.C.-based company's funding to nearly $28.5 million to date. In connection with the financing, Venrock vice president Dev Khare will join Appia's board.

Appia's multiplatform app service offers more than 140,000 free and paid titles for handsets running Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian and other software. Its white-label platform powers app storefronts for more than 40 wireless partners, including Samsung and other top phone makers, and three of the top four U.S. major carriers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

The company plans to use the new financing to accelerate development of its marketplace and launch more third-party app stores. Last week, Appia announced adding Telcel, Mexico's largest wireless operator, as its latest partner.

The intensifying competition in the app space was highlighted earlier this month when rival open app marketplace GetJar pulled the Opera Mini browser from its catalog after Opera launched its own Appia-powered app storefront.

GetJar CMO Patrick Mork indicated in a blog post that Opera had violated its agreement with the company by including a competing app store in its browser. GetJar itself landed $25 million in third-round funding in February from investors led by Tiger Global Management.

Amazon got into the act last week with the launch of its Amazon Appstore for Android, starting with 3,800 titles for Android devices. It promptly drew a trademark suit from Apple, claiming Amazon had infringed its mark for the term "App Store."

Helping to fuel investment and expansion in app distribution are big hits, such as Rovio's "Angry Birds," and forecasts for growing demand as more mobile users become smartphone owners. Gartner released a forecast predicting that global mobile app store revenue will nearly triple to $15 billion in 2011.

Separately, research firm Frost & Sullivan expects total downloads from smartphone app stores to increase worldwide from 9.6 billion in 2010 to more than 120 billion by 2015. Still, in the rapidly changing tech world, projecting five years out is difficult.