Apple Launches iTunes In Singapore, Hong Kong,Taiwan & 9 More Countries
(UPDATED) Late on Tuesday Apple launched its iTunes music store in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and nine other Asian countries with 20 million tracks of both local and international music from all four major label groups and many independents. The iTunes launch includes Apple's cloud service and joins the App Store, which has already launched in 155 countries.
Additional countries included in today's launch are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. Missing from today's launch is the potentially huge download market in India.
Movie rental or purchase is also available from launch partners including 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures.
The shame is that they have missed 3 years of iPhone mania here.
On the positive side, we may finally see some meaningful revenue from downloads in this part of the world. Can’t wait to see the first download sale from Thailand where I live!
Were they able to swing centralized licensing for mechanicals? Other than a few of these named territories, paying the local society for foreign repertoire seems pretty much a one way ticket.
They launched in Sri Lanka but skipped India. That’s got to hurt for India!
They also skipped Indonesia, the biggest country in the Southeast region!
Thanks Bruce, nice info. Ooh yeah, Asia is so hot right now, tssssss!