The BlackBerry PlayBook will be available in Indonesia in August but the product is already available at several black market electronics vendors in Indonesia since April. Of course the authenticity of these early PlayBooks is questionable. It is the same product, but without warranty.
Prior to the official launch, the black market version of the PlayBook is priced at around $975, which is contrastingly higher than the highest priced authorized US model at $699. The price of these smuggled goods will go down by half, once the PlayBook is officially launched in Indonesia. As goods sold in black market are not exposed to custom tax, the black market goods suppliers could still reap some profits from their sales.
The level of electronic goods smuggling in Indonesia is high. Merchants revealed to AFP that these goods came from Mexico or the U.S.
The Indonesian government is aware of the problem but admitted that it cannot overcome this smuggling problem as the nation is such a wide archipelago which makes it difficult to monitor. So far there are only five major trading gateways, but the smugglers can still enter from other regions.
Despite losing consumption taxes due to black market goods, the government still have much to gain:
“All those satellites and antennas you see on top of buildings, they are funded by the private sector. So the government is now sitting pretty collecting bandwidth money,” said Debnath Guharoy of Roy Morgan market research.
“They are issuing licences worth millions of dollars which costs them nothing, really. I don’t think the black market is going away.”
Whatever the motivation is, the current effort to fight black market goods is inadequate. Government regulation is not faring well, and there is a low emphasis in educating the population on counterfeit goods and copyright issues.
The black market doesn’t affect RIM’s bottomline as it continues to receive profits from the sale of its products regardless of where they were sold. Nevertheless, RIM wants consumers to understand the disadvantages of buying black market products. The warranty makes a huge difference when a device runs into problems.
As Indonesia is one of the largest markets for BlackBerry products, RIM remains confident that it will continue to post good sales figures, even if the black market problem cannot be eliminated.
Image Credit: The Age
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