Microsoft's Windows Store goes global with 33 more countries

Microsoft's Windows Store

(Credit: Microsoft)

Developers in 38 countries around the world can now submit Metro-style apps for Windows 8 to Microsoft's Windows Store. The tech company announced today that it is forging ahead with its goal to "deliver a global service" with its app store.

"We want to support developers regardless of where they are, and give customers apps that match their interests, including local offerings," Antoine Leblond, Microsoft's vice president of the Windows Web Services team, wrote in a blog post.

The Windows Store, which launched in preview mode in February, offers both free and paid apps, with the paid ones ranging in price from $1.49 to $999.99. Reportedly, developers will also be able to create trial apps that expire after a certain amount of time. Microsoft will initially take a 30 percent cut of sales, dropping to 20 percent if an app racks up more than $25,000 in sales.

Before today, the store supported app submissions from developers with dedicated app catalogs in France, Germany, India, Japan, and the U.S.; those in other countries could use the "Rest of World" catalog. In the company's next preview release, it will add 33 app submission locales for developers, bringing the total to 38 countries.

"When you're building a service at the scale of Windows, it needs to grow gradually and deliberately," Leblond wrote. "Running the Windows Update service with hundreds of millions of client connections has taught us a lot about building, scaling, and securing such a service."

Even though still in the Windows 8 pre-release time frame, Microsoft says there have been millions of app downloads "by people in more than 200 markets."

Other changes the tech company is making to the Windows Store is it is expanding the number of market-specific app catalogs from five to 26 and adding seven new languages to the pre-release developer portal.