Google expands Market for paid Android apps, but still snubs 85% of the world

Good news! If you're an Android developer living in Brazil, Canada, Russia, or 17 other countries you can cancel the movers because Google will now let you sell Android apps in the Market. Likewise, you folks in India, Singapore, and 16 other places can stay right where you are because in a couple of weeks you'll be able to pay for those apps.

That's right, Google announced a large expansion to the Android Market today when it added 20 new countries where developers of paid apps can live and 18 more places where consumers of those apps can live. However the number still falls far short of the total number of countries in the world. Here's a copy of the email they sent out to registered developers:

From: Android Market Support Date: Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 6:45 PM Subject: A Message from Android Market

Hello,

We're writing to inform you about some changes to Android Market that require your attention.

Effective today, developers from 20 additional countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan) can now sell paid apps on Android Market. Over the next 2 weeks, users from 18 new countries (Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, and Taiwan) will be able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

Please see the related post at Android Developer Blog here: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/

We encourage you to visit the Android Market developer console at http://market.android.com/publish to make the necessary adjustments.

Thanks, and we look forward to continue working with you on Android Market.

Sincerely, The Android Market Team

Google, Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043

For those of you playing at home, this brings the total number of supported countries to:

Developers can live here: Free apps: all (192-208 depending on who you ask) Paid apps: 30 (but several are required to be paid through AdSense)

Users can live here: Free apps: 48 (all countries where Android phones are for sale) Paid apps: 32 (was 14, or 9 in Google's original list)

Interestingly, buyers can live in, but not develop in: Czech Republic and India. Don't ask me why.

Updated 01oct2010/ebb: It looks like Google's official lists are not complete. For example they leave out Canada and Hungary from the countries where users can buy apps. Added countries from Distimo list. Thanks to reader Doug Schaefer for spotting that. So now they're only snubbing 83% of the world with paid apps, my bad (1-32/192=83.3%). Just counting the countries where Android phones are for sale, they're only snubbing 33% of those, which is an improvement over 70% before this announcement.