Windows Phone Marketplace Expands to Indonesia and Four Other Countries

Ahead of the public launch of Lumia in Indonesia on February 17, Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace has expanded to five additional countries including Indonesia as of today. Just last month, the Redmond giant added six countries to the App Hub so developers could prepare their apps for distribution in those countries. The five countries are Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, The Philippines, and Argentina, bringing the number of Marketplace availability to 40 countries.

Among the six countries recently introduced to the App Hub, China is the only one not included in this expansion but developers are still welcomed to submit their applications. What is holding back China is unclear although one could speculate that Microsoft may still be working on the legalities and paperworks in order to allow developers to make their apps available to Chinese consumers.

For Windows Phone owners in those five countries, Windows Phone 7.5 is required to access the Marketplace. Those still running older version of the operating system will have to upgrade to version 7.5 as soon as possible. Upgrade instructions are available here.

Previously, owners of Windows Phone devices in these five countries had to register to a Marketplace outside of their own. For those who have done so, it's currently unclear what would happen to the apps that they have downloaded.

At this point it also remains a question whether an existing Live account that has been registered to another Marketplace can be used to register to any of the new Marketplace countries that correspond to the owners' actual countries.

Another question is whether the Marketplace will allow paid apps as well as free apps immediately, or whether paid apps will arrive at a later date. Methods of payments have yet to be announced as well.

Those who are participating in this weekend's Nokia developer day in Bandung will be able to register their apps directly to the Marketplace and have them ready before the Lumia launch and it will be the perfect event to find out if any of the questions above can be answered by representatives of either Microsoft or Nokia.