Mobile Phones Lead Internet Growth in Indonesia, Entertainment Industry Tops the Market

Yahoo (NASQAQ:YHOO) working together with TNS Net Index, has just released its annual study about internet user behavior in Indonesia. Hansal Savla, the Technical Advisor of TNS Indonesia, said that there are four significant trends they found in the study.

First, mobile phone usage has led internet growth in the past two years. Hansal said:

Mobile phones have become the second most used informational media (55 percent) after television (100 percent).

This is bad news for internet cafes as more and more people have grown out of their dependency on cafes to access the internet. Admittedly, study from Yahoo also shows that internet cafes have recently lost 34 percent of their customer base. Another study by InMobi earlier this month that revealed the significant growth numbers of mobile devices in Indonesia may be one of the reasons behind this trend.

Second, there has been a slight shift in internet user demographics. No longer do net users come from just the young demographic, but they also come from an older age group too, including those 30 to 50 years old. The trend is said to be attributed due to the growth of internet mobile access.

The demographic user age of 15 to 19 years old dominates the internet user population focusing on entertainment news, city guide, and games. While users between 30 to 39 years old are the biggest information explorers on the internet. Those 40 and above represent the least number of internet users focusing on news and financial information.

Third, Indonesia’s internet users prefer entertainment to other online contents. Jhoni Tuerah, associate client advisor of TNS Indonesia said:

Some of the most visited sites include social networks, search engines, celebrity issues, news portals, and online music file-sharing sites.

The top growing entertainment channels are celebrity and entertainment news (40 percent) and online music file-sharing activities (39 percent). You can see additional info regarding Indonesians’ behavior when accessing the internet entertainment channel in the findings of research company Ipsos.

Last but not least is that search engine usage growth that has increased by 75 percent compared to last year’s also-outstanding growth of 70 percent. Most people search for pictures, music, and videos.

Savla explained that the study was conducted among 3,365 respondents located in different cities in Indonesia, such as Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi, Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, Semarang, Palembang, Makassar, Yogyakarta, and Denpasar between December 2011 and January 2012.