Windows Phone Marketplace hits 13 new countries

Microsoft announced that it has made the Windows Phone Marketplace available in 13 more countries.  Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela to the list of countries supported by the official WP app repository.
With Argentina, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, and the Philippines joining the party earlier this year, this brings the WP Marketplace expansion counter for 2012 to 19 and the total availability to 54 countries.
The next wave of the Marketplace rollout will come later this year and will include UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Israel, Thailand, and Vietnam. There's no exact frame for it yet, but we should get more info about it in the coming weeks.
Microsoft is obviously gearing up for a rapid expansion of its platform, but so far the sales of its hardware have been largely underwhelming. Here's hoping that the upcoming Apollo update turns the smartphone market into the three-horse race that the company has been constantly talking about.