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Smartphone-Loving Indonesians Boost Internet Usage, Survey Says
Lisa Siregar | July 27, 2011

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Internet use in Indonesia this year surpassed both radio and newspaper, ranking second only to TV, according to a recent survey sanctioned by global Internet giant Yahoo.

Yahoo announced the results of their Net Index study at its Jakarta office on Tuesday.

The trend is largely driven by the increasing availability of low-cost smartphones with affordable voice and data packages. Cellphones were becoming many people’s primary tool for accessing the Internet, Yahoo said.

According to the survey, social networking was the most popular online activity for Indonesian users, at 89 percent, followed by visits to Web portals, with 72 percent, and news Web sites, with 61 percent.

While the figures were influenced by 15 to 24-year-olds, who were interested in accessing entertainment like games and music downloads, the survey found middle-aged users actually went online more frequently than young people.

The results revealed a shift in social networking activities and online transactions, said Suresh Subramanian, who is deputy managing director of TNS Indonesia, the global market information and insight group that conducted the study.

For example, he predicted that Facebook’s growth would slow as users explored new online activities in addition to connecting with their friends.

Suresh said companies should think carefully about how to target their market audiences, as users were getting smarter and more specific about whom they wanted to interact with online.

“Subtlety is key, as is providing entertaining content,” he said.

E-commerce would also become more popular, he said, but still faced a major obstacle in Indonesia’s lack of well established payment gateways.

E-commerce firms should make it easier for Indonesian users to complete online transactions, make transactions more secure and be creative in designing payment methods, he added.

This was the third time the annual Net Index was conducted. The study focuses on the country’s urban population, with researchers conducting face-to-face interviews with more than 1,000 Internet users of both sexes aged between 15 and 30 in Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi, Surabaya, Medan, Semarang, Palembang and Makassar.

Yahoo will use the results of the study to improve its understanding of the Indonesian market. Pontus Sonnerstedt, who is country manager for Yahoo Indonesia, said his company aimed to use the new information to develop strategies that would help Indonesian marketers reach their target audiences.

When asked about Yahoo’s strategy to compete with Google, which announced it would open an office in Indonesia later this year, Sonnerstedt declined to comment, only saying that Yahoo was committed to its mission “to grow the Internet in Indonesia.”