Developers, Rejoice! Apple Launches App Store In 32 More Countries

As expected, the App Store has officially launched in 32 new countries as of Friday, including Albania, Fiji, Namibia, Nepal, and Ukraine. This means that app developers can now sell or distribute their applications for gaming, productivity, news, business, education and entertainment in a total of 155 countries around the globe.

Apple CEO Tim Cook talked about the App Store at great length during his keynote speech for the 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, held on June 11.

The App Store is the most vibrant app ecosystem on the planet. And the size and momentum are just phenomenal, Cook said. We now have over 400 million accounts on the App Store. These are 400 million accounts with credit cards and one click buying, so it's simple and elegant to buy your apps. This is the store with the largest number of accounts with credit cards anywhere on the Internet that we're aware of. And thanks to you, we have over 650,000 apps in that store, and 225,000 of these apps have been specifically designed for iPad to take advantage of the large beautiful canvas. This compares to just a few hundred for our competition.

The App Store revolutionized the way users enjoy mobile content, by creating an ecosystem of countless cheap, downloadable applications and allowing users to purchase them and create massive libraries of useful apps, from addictive games to personalized news apps to apps that can even help save lives. At WWDC 2012, Apple announced that Apple recently celebrated the 30 billionth app download from its store.

[30 billion app downloads] is a number that is so mindboggling and was unthinkable not too long ago, Cook told the WWDC audience. And developers have been well rewarded for this. We've written checks for over $5 billion to you guys. It's become an economy in and of itself. The App Store now operates in over 120 countries around the world, and I'm pleased to announce that beginning later this month, we're adding an additional 32 countries, so that you can sell your apps in 155 countries.

The full list of new App Store countries added in June includes: Albania, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Fiji, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Federated States of Micronesia, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Palau, Papua New Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe.

After tweaking the iOS and Mac App Stores in May, Apple announced it will launch completely redesigned versions of the App Store and iTunes Store alongside iOS 6 this fall.