Apple launched the iTunes Store in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and nine additional countries in Asia featuring a selection of local and international music from all the major labels and independent labels.

The iTunes Store features local artists including Jay Chou, Girls Generation and Andy Lau, international artists including ADELE, The Beatles and Jason Mraz, and classical musicians including Lang Lang, Yo Yo Ma and Yuja Wang.

Apple is bringing the iTunes Store to music fans in Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Customers can also rent or purchase movies from the iTunes Store, with many available in HD, from studios including 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures. The iTunes Store joins the App Store which offers more than 650,000 apps to consumers in 155 countries.

The iTunes Store allows iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and PC users to discover, purchase and download music online. All music on the iTunes Store comes in iTunes Plus, Apple?s DRM-free format with 256 kbps AAC encoding.

iTunes in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from the iTunes Store can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a new service that stores your entire music library in iCloud for access at any time, from any iOS device. iTunes Match is available for purchase in the new countries added today.

iTunes 10.6.3 for Mac and Windows includes the iTunes Store and is available as a free download from apple.com/asia/itunes. iTunes Store purchases require a valid credit card with a billing address in country.