The Marketplace is growing larger and larger every few months, and at MWC a few weeks ago Microsoft promised to deliver a number of new markets. Today Todd Brix has detailed the Marketplace expansion in a new post to the Windows Phone Developer Blog.

There are 23 new markets being adding in the next two weeks which developers will be able to publish to. The big one is China which is preparing for a big Tango launch next week, but there are other large regions that have had access to Windows Phones for a while like Saudi Arabia. Here's the full list:

• Bahrain, Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

This is in addition to the five new markets from earlier this year making for a total of 63 supported countries worldiwde. Microsoft also says this new batch will increase a developer's global reach by 60%. Once these markets go live you'll want to make sure you add them in your supported countries through App Hub. If you're a developer, it's also important to make sure your app is Tango-compatible which you can check with the preview SDK and if its not there are plenty of guides to get you on your way.

In a side note, Brix also confirms the Marketplace's issues keeping up with the influx of new app submissions which has caused app certification for many to take longer than 7 days.

Source: Windows Phone Developer Blog