Google’s Eric Chu sent out an email message to Android Market participants recently that outlines some of the company’s plans for the future of the Android Market.  In particular, Eric explained that developers will be able to target specific countries with an application, which will allow them to offer, for example, a French version of the app to customers in France and an English version of an app for those in the U.S. and U.K.

Eric also said that we will see paid apps in the market in “early Q1″ of 2009.  Since it requires some time to set up payment systems in each country, paid apps will be rolled out slowly.  They will first be available in the U.S. and U.K., to then be followed by Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, and later by France, Italy, and Spain.

The full text of Eric’s email is available after the jump:

Hello,

Thank you for your participation in Android Market!

Since we launched a couple months ago, the team has been working on several significant updates to Android Market. I’d like to let you know about these upcoming changes and what they will mean to you and other members of our developer community.

Many of you have asked about international expansion plans. I’m happy to inform you that Android Market will become available to users to download apps in additional European countries starting early Q1 2009. Some of the countries we will initially support are Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands. As we add support for additional countries in Europe and Asia, we will send out subsequent notifications to you. In mid-January, we will update the Android Market publisher website to enable country targeting. Please start thinking about which countries you want to
target and begin preparing your products accordingly (e.g., localization). Note that your apps will not become available in these new countries unless you specifically select them in the publisher website,
after we update it.

Additionally, I would like to confirm that Android Market will support priced applications starting early Q1 2009, as we’d originally stated last fall. Given the country-by-country work required to set up payment support for developers in different countries, we will enable priced app support in Q1 for developers operating in these countries in the following order: (1) United States and UK; (2) Germany, Austria and Netherlands; (3) France, Italy and Spain. By the end of Q1 2009, we will announce support for developers operating in additional countries. Developers operating in the above listed countries should begin finalizing their priced applications, including determining the appropriate pricing strategy.

Finally, please note that our team may need to occasionally contact you via email or the publisher website to collect necessary product information (such as screenshots and descriptions). This information would be used for the Android Market website, found at http://market.android.com, which gives applications a second channel of exposure via the web in addition to the normal on-device access.

We will send out additional details on all these items in the coming weeks. Thanks for your support, and we look forward to continue working with you on Android Market.

Eric Chu,
Android Market

Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

A hat tip to TalkAndroid.com for the email message!