John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Apple Just Added 56 Countries’ Worth of New iTunes Customers

Apple expanded its iTunes Store on Tuesday, launching it in India, Russia and 54 other countries (full list below).

The move nearly doubles the iTunes Store’s international footprint, raising the number of markets it serves to 119. And while the service’s offerings will initially be limited to music-only in many of those countries — only Russia, Turkey, India and Indonesia will support movie and video purchases — it’s a dramatic extension of Apple’s reach as a distributor of digital media. The addition of India and Russia alone increases the company’s addressable market by 105 million Internet users. Apple has 435 million iTunes accounts with associated credit card numbers; after today’s expansion, how many more will it have this time next year?

So this is a significant move for Apple. Not only will it boost revenue for the iTunes Store business, which generated total net sales of $7.5 billion during the company’s most recent fiscal year, it also brings important new content elements to the developing Apple ecosystems in those markets.

The addition of music, movie and video purchases increases the value proposition of Apple’s hardware. Remember, when it first debuted, the iTunes Store wasn’t intended to generate profits so much as it was meant to sell hardware. And that’s still one of its more important functions today. Enabling content purchases in these countries gives Apple one more hook with which to pull consumers into its ecosystem and keep them there.

The expansion of the iTunes Store follows the debut last week of iTunes 11, a complete overhaul of the media software.

Here are the newest additions to Apple’s global marketplace:

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua & Barbuda
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahamas
6. Bahrain
7. Barbados
8. Belarus
9. Belize
10. Bermuda
11. Botswana
12. Burkina-Faso
13. Cape Verde
14. Cayman Islands
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Israel
25. Russia
26. Saudi Arabia
27. South Africa
28. Turkey
29. United Arab Emirates (UAE)
30. Jordan
31. Kazakhstan
32. Kenya
33. Kyrgyzstan
34. Lebanon
35. Mauritius
36. Micronesia, Fed States of
37. Moldova
38. Mongolia
39. Mozambique
40. Namibia
41. Nepal
42. Niger
43. Nigeria
44. Oman
45. Papua New Guinea
46. Qatar
47. Saint Kitts and Nevis
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Trinidad and Tobago
51. Turkmenistan
52. Uganda
53. Ukraine
54. Uzbekistan
55. Virgin Islands, British
56. Zimbabwe

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus