Microsoft said that its Windows Phone Marketplace is now open in 13 new markets, enabling consumers to buy apps and games, and taking its total reach to 54 territories.

The new countries are Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

The company is in the process of rolling out the store to numerous markets, with other recent additions including Argentina, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, and the Philippines.

And it also has a number of additional launches in the pipeline, including in UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Israel, Thailand, and Vietnam.

While the consumer-facing store is rolling out rapidly, Microsoft’s Todd Brix took to the company’s Developer Blog to state why its developer App Hub is not expanding at a similar rate. He noted: “simply put, it takes a lot of legal and engineering work to bring App Hub to new markets.”

Among the issues that need to be addressed are setting up registration and payment infrastructure,  complying with local laws and regulations, and “doing all the other work necessary to ensure you have the tools you need to publish free and paid apps—and get compensated properly.”

The company has a Global Publisher programme in place, intended to help developers in regions where App Hub is not available to bring Windows Phone products to market.