You can’t ignore the Indonesian mobile market

“If you’re building a global mobile app and you haven’t thought about reaching users in Indonesia, you might be missing out big-time.”

These words came out straight from revered tech journalist Abhimanyu Ghoshal’s mouth.

And he has a point. Ignoring the country’s more than 250 million people is like saying you’re not interested in selling your mobile app in China or India. The great thing about Indonesia’s mobile app market is that it remains relatively untapped—meaning to say, there are many rooms to grow for any mobile app developer in this country since the market, as experts would say it, “has not reached its full potential yet.”

According to tech writer Steve Anderson, a large percentage of Indonesia’s population remains “smartphone-less,” which made the country an alluring market for tech firms in the past years.

“There are some places where the smartphone—despite the best efforts of all the smartphone makers out there—isn’t quite catching on. One of these places, according to new reports, is Indonesia, where smartphone penetration is still considered to be quite low,” he wrote on Mobility Tech Zone.

The influx of foreign tech firms in Indonesia has encouraged the local government to improve the country’s Internet technology. By 2017, Anderson wrote, all wireless network would be upgraded to 4G speeds, which has a proposed budget of $4.5 billion. Also, over 35 million smartphones would be produced across the country starting that year, a good indication of something promising for the local tech market.

An independent study released by XL Axiata revealed that the country’s smartphone and Internet penetration increase as its GDP improves. Thus, the growing buying power of the country’s working to middle class sector would be a key factor in the continuous improvements in its local tech segment.

The country’s smartphone penetration posted a 15 percent year-on-year increase in December 2014, while its Internet penetration is expected to improve by 40 percent this year.

In fact, the country’s mobile market’s consistent growth has already attracted giant firms from China. Xiaomi and Cheetah mobile, two of China’s largest tech firms, have been investing a lot of efforts in building a strong presence in Indonesia. In September 2014, Xiaomi launched its very first low-cost product in Indonesia in hopes of attracting its lower-middle class market. This paved the way for other tech firms—mobile phone producers, software and app developers—to look at the country and explore its growing market.

“I have a very, very positive attitude for the Indonesian market. Competition in the current Indonesian market is not as severe as China,” Johnny Li, general manager of international business development of Cheetah Mobile, told The Jakarta Globe.

But Indonesia has not only become appealing to giant firms but also to startup companies that have global goals in mind. The newly launched mobile app Born2Invest, which curates business and finance stories of news heavyweights like BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal, will soon be available in the country in its official language, Bahasa Indonesia.

“We at Born2Invest believe that Indonesia is an important market in the Southeast Asian region, and the only way to make our app attractive to Indonesian business news enthusiasts is to offer our news summaries in their native tongue, which is actually the core of our business model—we cater to nations through their local language. Our app will soon be available in more than 50 languages across the globe,” M6 Limited CEO Dom Einhorn said in an email interview.

This year, an Uber-like motor delivery service app shook the country after it enjoyed more than one million downloads only six months after its launch. The app also experienced wide national media coverage as many of this app’s drivers have experienced violence and threats from traditional motorbike taxi drivers who hated the competition.