[Rabidgremlin]

Although you CAN buy apps on the New Zealand market place, as a developer in New Zealand, you CANNOT sell any apps!

As a developer you need to be in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States to set up a merchant account.

I had an email conversion with Tim Bray about this...

He said: "I hear you. We're working on lots more countries. It's an amazing amount of work to do each one. -Tim"

But did not indicate any timeline :(

[nl]

Here's the list of countries: http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

I'm _amazed_ that Google hasn't fixed this. Apple didn't have the problem at all, and I don't understand why it is taking Google so long.

[heresy]

It took the longest time to get the iTunes store in New Zealand.

I imagine once they had it set up for music, video, etc, adding in support for paid apps was relatively simple.

[djcapelis]

> Apple didn't have the problem at all

You sure about that? Just because Apple took care of it doesn't mean it didn't take a lot of work.

[mechanical_fish]

The secret is that Apple did all the groundwork years in advance, as part of rolling out the Apple Stores, the iTunes Music Store, et cetera.

[hboon]

But in many countries, such as Singapore, iTunes stores (music, movies, etc) wasn't available. They still aren't available, but the app store is, once they rolled out iPhones worldwide in a matter of months.

[nonane]

Doesn't Google already have a way to remit money to adsense partners across the world?

[mechanical_fish]

Presumably. But AdSense is a rather different business.

Consider: I don't think advertising is subject to sales tax. Here's New York State on the subject:

http://nystax.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nystax.cfg/php/enduser/st...

When you go into a product business you may have a different set of legal issues to consider. It's also B2C rather than B2B, which changes the sort of customer service you need and (I'm guessing) dramatically increases your vulnerability to things like chargebacks and stolen credit cards.

[rimantas]

Gruber's cynical view on this: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/16/google-paid-apps

[donaq]

Me too. I'm in Singapore and, say what you will about the way the country is governed, but they always make it easy for business to be conducted here. If Google is actually trying here, I'd be very interested to know what difficulties they're experiencing.

[whatusername]

Hell - we might not be able to buy iphone/android games in Australia in a few weeks: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/apps-and-game...

[caf]

Oh bloody hell, this isn't a problem with the Apple or Google app stores, it's a problem with the ridiculous censorship regime itself.

[SoftwareMaven]

Well, you wouldn't be able to find them anyway, thanks to the Great Barrier Firewall. :(

[whatusername]

Fingers crossed we can avoid the firewall. (One of the 2 major parties (the conservative party called the Liberals) has stated that they will vote against it. The Greens have stated their opposition as well. Unless the Labor party (the supposed left-wing party) wins a majority in the Senate (unlikely) - the filter is dead.

[Devilboy]

That is such a disaster for free / ad supported apps.

[yason]

I really wonder what per-country work is needed really?

There's internet! Money bounces back and forth over the internet already. People have credit cards. What is it that Google has to do to let me sell and buy Android apps in one of the unlisted European countries that I live in?

[lsc]

VAT and other tax weirdness. generally speaking, if I (based in the US) sell a product to someone in, say, japan, absent any tariffs, I don't need to pay any taxes. But, if I have a business presence in japan, I've gotta pay Japanese sales taxes on that.

It's all more complex than that... but yeah, doing business in other places usually results in tax weirdness.