Microsoft has been working hard to bring the Windows Phone Marketplace to several countries and markets and it recently doubled the supported countries from last year and now Microsoft has announced that they are adding 23 new markets around the world, which will bring the total number of markets with access to 63 and that it will soon be accepting app submissions for these new regions.

The new regions cover Eastern Europe – Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine; the Middle East – Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and United Arab Emirates; Asia – China, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Vietnam; Central/South America – Costa Rica, and Venezuela; and Europe – Iceland.

The developers will be able to start submitting apps for the new markets, or expanding existing apps into those markets once App Hub gets updated to cover the additional regions. Bahrain, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE require “additional certification requirements due to local laws or norms” for app submissions so the developers must make sure that their apps are not offending anyone or are have any obscene or offensive content.