Archive for July, 2008

OK guys, a quick recap on yesterday’s event. (It’s already late, and tomorrow’s a holiday).

First of all, thanks for BuzzCity who specially sponsored for this event, along with Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia Mobile Phones.

Secondly, we gave out FREE books for all who’s attending, courtesy of Equinox Publishing. The book is titled Loose Wire: a personal guide to making technology work for you (website here) authored by a good friend of MoMo Jeremy Wagstaff. So, those who are not attending… didn’t you regret for not coming? :-p

Anyway, we still have a plenty of stock available, so watch this space if you’re interested in getting one…

Next, comes the recap.

Denny Yohanes from Nokia Siemens Networks opened the session with highlights from recent market survey that NSN commissioned about (mobile) broadband usage in Indonesia. He explained what is the perception, expectation, recent for adoption, and usage pattern of broadband end users. Clearly, mobile broadband is an interesting market opportunity, because a lot of potential users will readily jump the bandwagon if the broadband service is correctly packaged.

If I have to summarize, I would take two points: 1) adoption of broadband is fueled by the recommenders, delight them and you will get the mass market. Then 2) Denny offered excellent insights for service providers to do that: excite the users through creating a stable & reliable connection, differentiate your broadband offer through easy package and interesting content to feed snack-like consumption, and finally expand the market to the mass by simplify the experience and campaign for productivity.

Jeff from Friendster went on to explain the features of Friendster. The most popular social networking site in Indonesia. If we’re at 20 million Internet subs (APJII data/estimate 2007/2008), then half of them are in Friendster (11 million users, 8.2 unique users). He explained further certain features that are availble for the mobile version to cater the market needs and openness of the platform.

In my opinion, the stickiness of (mobile) social networking in interesting and its popularity in Indonesia . People generally spend up to twice the time in social networks website compared to other website (even YouTube).

BTW, do you know that Indonesian artists do have Fan Profiles in Friendster, and they are using it to maintain the fan-dom? Have you add Sandra Dewi to your account, join the other 100k fans!?

Hisham from BuzzCity then reiterated the importance of mobile community in Indonesia. BuzzCity is running an award-winning mygamma.com mobile social networking site and combined with advertising network (a winning combo!). According to their statistics, most of their users are male, young (70% are 20-30 y.o.) and college educated (an interesting profile for ad target, BuzzCity Indonesian ad growth is already at 85% for Q2/2008).

Further more, Indonesian mobile soc-netters enjoy sharing movies, videos/TV, music, and fashion. And an opportunity lies in their readiness to make e-commerce transaction, even through their mobile, especially purchase of digital goods (e.g. virtual gifts, music, e-books). Interesting… For further details, I encourage you to visit their website and look for their “Digital Lifestyle Report”

Ah, and finally Ryan from Indonesian Opera Community told his Internet usage story. Ryan is particularly pleased with the recent advancement of mobile browser (Opera Mini, to be exact), which allows users to enjoy the “full web” experience on their mobile phones. Besides web browsing, email and chatting (he mentioned a lot of apps to do this) are two important applications to be experienced on mobile phones…. talking about getting 24/7/365 connectivity.

I knew that Ryan often complained about his Internet connection quality – which is a challenge in Indonesia. And beyond that, web publishers, he mentioned, should provide users the option to switch freely from mobile web v.s. full web, thus maximizing the capability of recent breed of mobile web browsers.

We closed the session with an entertaining music from ESound (check out their website here), don’t forget to listen to their original tracks: Khayal. (I noticed that there is a person from a record label, will ESound land a record deal soon…?)

That’s all, folks.

Oh, one more thing, slides can be downloaded from our Download Section.

From the blogosphere, our friends at MOPocket wrote about an online survey re. mobile social networking. Indonesia, being one of the largest fan of MoSocNet, should definitely take part in a survey.

The results of this survey will be compiled during the month of July 2008. Findings report will be made available in August 2008 and will be blogged about on MOPocket. Your input and comments are invaluable to this study.

To help out and take the quick survey click here.

[via MOpocket]

The fun part of being in MobileMonday is… to attend parties as well… MobileMonday @ Opera Gathering last Saturday. Say hi to our new friends from Opera! Putri (the only Indonesian working at Opera Software) and Tatsuki Tomita (SVP, Consumer Products).

According to them, Opera aims to deliver a “One Web” experience, blurring the Internet experience between multiple screens (PC, TV, and Mobile). And up to now, Opera Mini has been downloaded 44 million time, and they got 15 million unique customers in May 2008. Have you tried the Opera Mini or Opera Browser?

PS. Salute to the young Ryan as well, who’s one of the My Opera Community Indonesia caretaker.

Plazes, the location based social networking services has been acquired by Nokia for an undisclosed amount.

For those who aren’t familiar, Plazes is a web service for geo-social navigation. Members of the community can publish and share  their current location with others creating a collection of their favourite and day-to-day locations in a geo-database. Members of the Plazes community can actively locate one another, connecting their digital and real-world identities. By providing location context the service makes it easy for its users to coordinate with friends, family and business contacts wherever they are.

This add on to Nokia’s arsenal on location based services, following up their acquisition of Navteq last year and earlier purchase of Gate5 in 2006, which resulted the Nokia Map 2.0 which we are using now. Imagine if later Nokia can integrate the location sensitive communities and mobile based advertisement togerther. It will be a sure killer service! Nokia should have all the formula as they also the owner of enpocket mobile advertisement platform. Let’s wait and see…

Plazes is a German based company, which is also the winner of MobileMonday Global Peer Awards in 2007! Hmm…

Another shocking interesting fact from Google. Andrew McGlinchey shared with us that search done from mobile in Indonesia is growing tremendously since September 2007. And for the last 6 months, basically the number has doubled already.

The why is still a mystery, but also this is an encouraging trend that mobile Internet is potentially a big market here in our country. Interestingly, the same trend is confirmed by other global and regional (mobile) Internet players, like Opera Mini, AdMob, Buzzcity, etc.

One more thing.

Could you help Google to validate their findings (search log) by doing this search on your mobile phone?

Please enter a search in the format of
“Momo1234 operator plan phonetype”

Example:
“Momo1234 Telkomsel Prepaid 3G Nokia N95″
“Momo1234 Indosat Matrix Huawei Modem”

Yesterday was a fun, but a little bit different MoMo event…. First is that we co-hosted the event with MASTEL, the topic was mobile infrastructure related. Naturally, we have a bit different audience. But it was still filled with relax, fun and productive atmosphere.

Here’s the recap, as promised.

Pak Giri from MASTEL welcome the audience and gave an interesting example on how broadband can bring productivity and increase quality of life.

Werner Sutanto from Intel explained the status of WiMAX from around the globe: deployment and use cases, drivers for adoption (which is the pervasiveness of Internet), and most importantly certification status.

It is also interesting that major countries in SEA in the forefront of WiMAX deployment. Networks in Singapore, Malaysia, The Philipines and Cambodia are approaching commercial launch.

He shared Intel platforms that will go into notebooks and MID/mobile handsets. Fueled by certification and mass adoption, chipset price will go further down and drive the demand further.

Next, Yohan Suryanto from ABWINDO shared his view about the potential of WiMAX in Indonesia. He mentioned clearly that access to information is one of the key human rights (Pancasila Sila V) and thus driving the demand for bandwidth all across Indonesia.  WiMAX is a key technology enabler to serve this.

Yohan and Werner highlighted the need for thorough eco system to boost adoption. (And later on also voiced by Trio).

As for Indonesia, he gave a number of good proposal to enable WiMAX, such as: potential frequency band to be allocated, equipment standards, licenses reward process.

Last but not least, Trio Adiono from ITB explained his bold vision to enter the WiMAX chipset business. He and team have already 20 years of experience in chip design, and he believed that the time is right for Indonesia to ride on the WiMAX wave.

Their first product will be 2.3 GHz WiMAX baseband chipset. (Baseband is the part which processes digital data from MAC/Ethernet layer into IF data to feed the radio part, if you know what I mean).

We conclude the event with Google giving away a couple of mugs and a very interesting insight on what’s happening recently in Indonesian mobile Internet market. (Details after the break).

Slides will be available in this website (see the Download section) or in Slideshare (goto www.slideshare.net/idmobilemonday).