Sorry this comment field doesn't like my iPad and removes all paragraph spacing. .......... Generally speaking separate ccTLD are better but more time and resource intensive since you'll be maintaining multiple sites. With country specific TLD you will find it easier to entice local linking from within the country. Overall you will have a better time convincing the search engines that you are running a targeted, local customer centric web experience. .......... But you don't have the country domains, right? Personally I like the idea of subdomains purely for the separate site treatment. Often the architects make the appended folders and that is probably what you'll end up doing. That method confuses people the least. .......... Regardless of what you pick, keep an eye on duplicate content. Also recognize that the appended folders will not add much at all to your main .com if the traffic is truly arriving from diverse countries. Beyond that work on your community building, quality link building, content, blah, blah, blah (add your favorite SEO buzzwords here). I don't think hosting server location matters too much, either as long as all the signals indicate that it is a country specific site.
