iTunes Store finally opens in Phl, other Asian countries

MANILA, Philippines - Apple last Wednesday finally rolled out its iTunes Store here and in 11 other Asian countries, giving consumers in this part of the world their long overdue opportunity to buy songs and movies from the world’s most popular online digital media store.

The fact that the iTunes Store has been up in the United States since 2003 makes the belated rollout in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong an exciting development, especially among Apple fans from this region who have long owned the Apple gadgets but were precluded from buying legal copies of songs and movies from iTunes.

Until last Wednesday’s launch, iTunes was available only in three countries in the Asia-Pacific, namely Australia, Japan and New Zealand.

For years, Apple customers in the Philippines and those from Brunei, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, could only access the company’s App Store, a separate software-based platform, to get content for their iPods, iPhones and iPads.

If they wanted to populate their Apple devices, many resorted to buying iTunes gift cards from the US and simply ripping their music from their audio CDs or downloading free podcasts.

That is likely to change after Apple sent e-mail to registered users, informing them that millions of high-quality DRM-free songs, full music albums, and movies can now be purchased by Philippine-based customers and those in 11 other countries from the iTunes Store.

Now, all they have to do is use their credit cards to buy and download music and videos, just like what consumers do in 51 other countries around the world, and hopefully get better local pricing, too.

The iTunes Store now offers over 28 million songs, videos and applications. From this massive collection, the online media store generated revenues of nearly $1.4 billion in October last year, a large chunk of which was from the sale of 16 billion songs.

The recent announcement also makes Asian artists look toward using the iTunes Store as a stable platform to bring their work to local fans.

Apple’s latest move mirrors how Asia is the company’s fastest growing region today where mobile Apple products such as iPods and iPads have been extremely popular, so much so that the attraction to earn more by selling content for these devices seems to eclipse concerns about piracy — their old excuse for withholding iTunes Store service in most parts of Asia. For that reason, full-fledged iTunes Store remains off limits to China, India and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, Apple is estimated to have shipped 35 million iPhones and iPads in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding Japan, in 2011, creating a big demand for content that can be sourced from iTunes.

Fortunately, Apple now appreciates this enough to fully open the iTunes floodgates to the Philippines and its neighbors. After all, almost a decade late is still better than never.