The iPhone and the App Store contradictions

Marta Kagan recently put online a useful presentation on branded applications for the iPhone, considered as the next generation of immersive mobile branding. Her slideshow gives me the opportunity to spend a couple of words on the huge contradictions I see on App Store if you take the digital marketer point of view.

We are talking so much about the digital world, where everything and everybody is connected, where you can discover and get to know great ideas and great people from all around the world, global meets local etc, etc, etc… But, but, but the Apple App Store is far from being a global store. If you are based in Italy for example, very often you can’t buy nor even download for the applications developed in the US, and viceversa.

As you know, there is a different store for each single country. This differentiation makes perfect sense if you are looking at music or movies because of all the implications of rights management, but to me it becomes a strong and kind of silly limit if you think about applications, and branded applications in particular. Unless you have a credit card issued in the country where you want to purchase the digital good there is no way to download the software. And this becomes even more silly if we are talking about a free application.
I know that the developer can decide whether he wants to launch a new applications only in his country, or if he wants to launch it on a global scale. However I wonder if all marketers working on developing branded applications are aware/informed of this possibility.
As a curious marketer, as a blogger and even as a consumer I would be very interested in trying out (for example) the applications by GAP and Kraft but this is simply not feasible.
The bottom line of this whiny post is: Is anybody aware of a trick to be able to download applications from other countries stores???