HP TouchPad hits Asia-Pacific next month, App Catalog expanding to support 12

We’ve known for a few days now that the HP TouchPad has been planned for a grand coming out party (or at least availability) in Australia on August 15th, but what about the rest of the world? It turns a few other countries – namely New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong – can look forward to getting the TouchPad in August as well. Specific dates and pricing weren’t made available for those countries.

Along with the TouchPad’s availability expansion will come App Catalog expansion. Developers can now submit apps for the aforementioned Asia-Pacific countries, or just let their apps considered for sale in the “rest of the world” automatically be made available to the new TouchPad adopters on the other side of the planet. Right now there’s only support for free apps in these countries, but we’re being told to “stay tuned” because that support is coming “soon.” (we know, we know)

It’s good to see HP making good on its promise to continue expanding TouchPad availability, but we can’t help but think they might be being timid when it comes to potential market sizes. After all, there are massive markets ripe for the picking in China, India, and the Philippines, not to mention Europe outside of the British Isles, Germany, and France. Oh, and all of South America too. Of course, these things take time, but if HP can deploy new computers and printers globally, why not the TouchPad?