Currently Windows Phone Marketplace only supports seventeen countries. So if your one of the lucky many to own a Windows Phone 7 but live in a country with no Windows Phone Marketplace, you’re stuck with a great phone with no available options to get those goodies you just have to have!

Don’t fear, there is currently a petition started directed at Microsoft to get the rest of the world supported.

Granted, Microsoft may have a lot of issues such as trade restrictions, currency exchange issues, and other hurdles to overcome, but with the petition it at least shows Microsoft how popular their new phone is and to get the ball rolling faster.

There are no reasons given why there’s no access to the marketplace in these other countries even though the phones are officially on sale by local mobile operators. One can only guess what those reasons are. The only remotely logical explanation is that you want to localize the marketplace into local languages and currencies for these regions before allowing access. This probably makes some sense in larger markets like Russia or China where the phones aren’t available yet (probably because OS is not localized into their languages).

However the phones are available for purchase via official channels in many countries around the world (probably all countries in European Union) even though there’s no localized user interface for these countries. Customers who make informed decision to buy a phone with English UI wouldn’t mind that Marketplace is in English too. What they do mind is that their new shiny smartphone has less features than a regular phone.

You may already have the marketplace available to you but can still sign the petition to help the rest of the world that’s missing out!

As of this posting there are currently 600+ Signatures and still counting!

To sign the petition visit the International Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Petition page.