Residents in Bermuda and other Caribbean countries can now purchase music, books and apps directly from Apple’s iTunes Store.After spending the last few months releasing a slew of new devices, Apple is now making a huge push this month into countries that don’t yet have its products and services.This week, the tech giant announced the grand opening of its iTunes Store in 56 countries around the world including Bermuda and heavily populated nations like Russia, India, South Africa and Turkey.Previously, residents here had to buy an iTunes gift card. Now, the company recognises Bermuda as a country for sales.But the move means that anyone on the Island who wants to buy music through iTunes will now be able to do so with a Bermuda-based credit card and mailing address — saving residents from having to purchase iTunes gift cards from local stores that often mark them up for profit.The launch of iTunes in Bermuda does not however, include the purchase of movies. Movies for rent or purchase are only available in the four aforementioned countries, for now. Apple says more countries will gain access to movie downloads in the future.The expansion into Bermuda and other countries throughout the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Asia and 28 countries in the Middle East and Africa brings the iTunes Store to 119 countries. More than 155 countries already have access to the App Store, which offers 700,000 apps for customers to download.While Apple faces increasing competition from similar services launched by Google and Microsoft as well as other content providers like Netflix and Spotify, Apple still benefits from its vast reach. iTunes has an estimated 64 percent share of the music download market with more than 435 million users already using the service. Since it was introduced in 2003, iTunes has sold more than 20 billion songs. iTunes currently offers a catalogue of more than 26 million songs.Apple reportedly generated $7.5 billion in 2012 from the iTunes Store alone, but will likely make significantly more over the next year considering how many countries are now gaining access.This latest move nearly doubles the number of countries in which the store operates, and is the latest step in a rush among various digital music services to capture new markets overseas. It also comes just days after Apple released its latest streamlined version of the iTunes programme, iTunes 11 — the biggest update yet to iTunes since the software debuted more than a decade ago.iTunes Match, Apple’s music library cloud storage service, is also available now in all countries that have access to iTunes.