In the next two weeks App Hub will start accepting submissions for the new Windows Phone Marketplaces we recently announced—a great opportunity for you to establish an early toehold on top download charts and get your app in front of eager new phone customers. My advice: Prepare now and beat the crowd.
The 23 new Marketplaces are launching this month in Bahrain, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam. That’s in addition to the five stores we opened earlier this year in Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, and the Philippines.
Once this latest batch goes live, it will bring our total number of customer storefronts to 63—nearly half of which are new in 2012. Factor in the new wave of handsets (including more affordable models) coming from Nokia, HTC, and ZTE, and it means a nearly 60 percent increase in the total addressable market for your apps.
How can you take advantage? Just visit App Hub once it’s been updated and select the markets where you’d like to publish your apps—or choose “worldwide” (even if you’ve selected this before) to make them available everywhere. We’re not adding new App Hub locations in this release. If it’s not available where you live, use a global publisher to submit your app.
Keep in mind that some new markets— Bahrain, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—are subject to additional certification requirements due to local laws or norms. Check Section 3.10 of our content policy for more details.
Finally, due to the volume of new app submissions and updates, it’s taking at least 7 calendar days to certify apps—a number that could increase. Just something to consider if you’re aiming to have your app live by a particular date.
When App Hub is ready for you to start submitting to these new markets in the next week or two, I’ll be back to let you know.