Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is continuing its expansion in Asia. Today the company announced that twelve more countries in the region that will be able to access its iTunes App Store.
The new countries include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia among others, while highly populated China, India and Indonesia were left in the cold. A note from the company stated,” We’re always working to bring the iTunes Store to more customers around the world, as conditions permit.”
The question remains why China and India, which have a combined population of 2.5 billion were excluded.
Some reports from Singapore suggest that one of the reasons Apple took so long to launch the iTunes App store in these countries, due to “its devotion to support for intellectual property rights, and piracy.”
The iTunes App store allows users to access to over 2 million music tracks, download movies, audio books, and other features like the iBookstore. The expansion to the new markets provides the company with an opportunity to increase its revenues. In 2011, Apple shipped approximately 35 million iPhones and iPads to the Asia-Pacific region with the exclusion of Japan.
Apple’s Q2 earnings produced a profit of $11.6 billion from a revenue of $ 39.2 billion, which is attributed to increase demand for iPhones and iPads in Asia, with China included. This suggets that an introduction of the App Store in the Chinese market could rally Apple’s income to an all time high.
In December last year, Apple launched its iTunes App Store in Brazil and 15 other Latin American Countries. Its latest exploits in Asia illustrate the company’s commitment to availing the App to many people as possible. The question still remains why India and China have been excluded.
Earlier in the day, Apple had announced a standalone app that breaks out the podcast listening and downloading feature from the iOS version of iTunes into its own app. CNET notes.
