Comments on: iTunes Quick Tip: Change Country

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:27:49 +0000

@Adriana: It is mostly the music and entertainment companies that are stupid and restrictive. They put the restrictions on what can be sold in each country. (Region coding of DVDs is another artifact of this.) In some cases you can get around some of the restrictions by purchasing iTunes gift cards from the country where you want to purchase entertainment from.

By: Adriana

Adriana — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:30:31 +0000

I am new to iTunes, but we bought iTouch because we want our kids to watch movies, listen to music…. when we travel to US and elsewhere. It was great for our friends kids on a plane as they all watch movies and listened to books, etc… but we are expats living in Hong Kong. We did not realized that you can’t buy from US store?!? We moved to Hong Kong several years ago so our credit cards are local Hong Kong cards. And we have no access to any US books, or movies. I feel we were cheated and our kids can not watch any movies on their iTouch. I feel it is stupid and restrictive, and the store should at least have some entertainment, music or movies, otherwise why have it?

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:17:02 +0000

@Vitepi: You may be able to get an iTunes gift certificate for the U.S. store and use that to purchase apps. This should work technically, but I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if it’s legal to do this in your country.

By: Vitepi

Vitepi — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:37:19 +0000

Here in Peru we have iphones but the Itunes store in not available. Its really annoying not to be able to use it because I cant even enter into the application when im using my iphone, it just blocks and says it is not available in my country. Do you have a solution for this?

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:34:13 +0000

@rob: If you could buy applications from any country’s store, that would defeat the purpose of having separate country specific iTunes stores. Since Apple has spent a lot of time and money building the iTunes infrastructure for different countries, I cannot imagine that this was an arbitrary decision. I can see several reasons why you would want to limit distribution of content and apps by country: licensing, support, local laws restricting certain content.

By: rob bezzi

rob bezzi — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:54:44 +0000

Does anybody know why one cannot buy applications outside his country of residence? I think it’s pretty stupid. Is it arbitrary or is there a reason?

By: Corey

Corey — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 12:49:47 +0000

Definitely did not know about some of those “Interesting Observations”, good to know for sure! Cheers

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:26:58 +0000

@Andrei: Thanks for the Bulgarian perspective!

I wonder why there are many apps that are not available in Romania/Bulgaria. As a developer you have to make an extra effort to restrict app sales to specific countries. The default (just one button click) is to make the app available world wide. Any developers out there who have restricted their app sales by country and would like to share their reasoning?

By: Andrei

Andrei — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:50:31 +0000

Bulgaria is one of the countries where the iPhone is officially available for more than 2 years but there is no Bulgarian iTunes Store. There is no “parent country” either. Bulgarian credit cards are accepted for Romanian iTunes store. In fact, the Romanian store has no music at all, so it is quite possible that the stores with no music don’t perform credit card originating country verification. The store operates in English so it’s generally OK. The downside is that there is a fare number of applications (including free ones) which are not available in the Romanian store.

By: Drapes

Drapes — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:50:05 +0000

I live between the UK and NZ and have credit cards for both countries. I usually use the store of the country I’m currently living/earning in but often change to get music unavailable in one store.

This feature has been here for a while, I’d guess since NZ got it’s own store, ‘05-’06. Probably earlier