Talk to an Android developer about their biggest gripes with the platform, and one the the top bullets on the list — probably even higher than the fragmentation issue — is that fact that Android Market has had weak support for international users.
Up until now developers in only nine countries were able to sell paid applications, and many international users haven’t been able to purchase applications either. Today, Google is announcing some big improvements on this front: developers from 29 countries will now be able to sell applications (a boost of 20 countries), and in the next two weeks it’s increasing the number of countries that support purchases from 14 to 32.
In other words, this means a big jump in the number of people who can develop paid apps, and it also means that the potential market size is going to be significantly larger, which is great news for all Android developers. We first broke the news about these impending changes earlier this week, but at the time Google wasn’t confirming how many countries were being added.
Here’s the full list, from Google’s blog post:
Support for paid application sales is now expanded to developers in 29 countries, with today’s additions of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.
In addition, Android Market users from 32 countries will be able to buy apps, with the addition of Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan.