Google expands Android Market to include Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Google Inc.'s Taiwan branch announced yesterday that the search engine giant had expanded its online smartphone application store Android Market, allowing Taiwanese sellers to cash in on rising global demand for mobile applications.

"We (Taiwan) have always been a hardware maker, and it is difficult for us to sell software," Google Taiwan General Manager Chien Lee-feng said at a news conference in Taipei.

Taiwanese companies and individuals can now develop various types of applications, or apps, and offer them on Android Market for paid users to download, Chien said. Every developer receives 70 percent of the revenue from each application sold.

Chien said that the number of countries in which developers can register on Android Market rose from nine to 29, including Taiwan.

The apps market will be open to Taiwanese buyers within two weeks, according to Google Taiwan.

In August, Google said that more than 200,000 devices for Android, an operating system developed by Google mainly for smartphones, were being registered daily.

A total of over 80,000 applications were available to download as of the end of September.