Most of the headlines in the newspapers are around the middle class people in the cities. Urban life. All the malls and socialites. Surely it’s the hottest market at this moment.

But let’s turn to the other part of Indonesia. We know that around 55% Indonesia’s population still live in rural area. And though middle class is said to be 56%, the majority of it (38%) is living in the range of $2 – $4 per day.

We know that these people have strong needs for communications as well, especially mobile communications. Our fellow citizen in the rural area does unique economic activities… and there are a good deal of use case for mobile apps/services to enhance their lives.

Join us the upcoming MobileMonday – “Mobile Apps for the People” co-hosted by Telkomsel

Speakers line up:

• Aldi Haryopratomo (Co-Founder and CEO RUMA, Rekan Usaha Mikro Anda) “Empowering People Through Technology“
• Mathieu LE BRAS (CEO 8villages) “What do the next tens of millions of Indonesian Internet users have in common?  They farm!“
• Dewi Wahyuni (Communication Specialist MicroAid) “Application for Rural Community“
• update: Robert Hasyim(BPR KS) on how micro banking can utilize mobile technology

Event Details:

• Date: Monday, 30 April 2012
• Time: 18.00 – onwards
• Venue: fx Senayan – The Only One Club, 5th Fl. (confirmed!)

Registration link: http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

See you there!

I think the presenters in the event provided a good balance of opinion. Part of them are upbeat about the opportunity in M2M, while there’s also the realist part… Audience are a bit of a split as well. That’s my quick take on the event.

The slides can be found here, as usual: https://sites.google.com/site/idmomoslides2012/

Rustam Effendie, from Ericsson Indonesia, opened the session with a nice video, and share Ericsson view on the potential of M2M. M2M should be viewed as not a mere technology, or even ecosystem only, but as a change potential in the society enabled by technology.

(By the way, Ericsson brought a small demo app, for Connected Cow, Connected Bike and Connected Tree).

Pak Rustam actually offered a framework of M2M development and deployment: how Telco, vendor, app developers, and devices should work together. (I can’t find his slide, I’ll remind them to share…)

Meanwhile, enjoy another Ericsson M2M slide from MoMo Athens (2011)

Then, Meli Wulandari of Telkomsel was on stage. She shared a couple of data including top 5 category of M2M applications:  Transport & Logistics, Automotives, Connected Consumer Electronics, Security, Retail & Commerce – all 5 comprises approximately 75% of the market.

In her view, the market is wide open for partnership model. Operators are looking for partners, and trying hard not to be a “pipe” provider. Key assets from operator that can be utilized by app/content developers is mobility management (e.g. managing provisioning of SIM cards in M2M modules).

Then we have Amy from CPN, sharing a number of success stories from her company in deploying fleet management applications using M2M solution. (Fleet management is one of the earliest, most common form of M2M). She showed a clear ROI from companies implementing M2M solution. These return come from the ability to measure things in a more exact manners — to my surprise some of these things looks like small things – very Indonesian things.

Finally, Johan Kremer of RIM shared his view on M2M in Indonesia. In his view, M2M could be only a niche market (but potentially a lot of niches) in Indonesia, given the popularity of mobile as Consumer devices and technology. Johan stressed the upcoming importance of m-commerce in Indonesia – a B2B2C solution: employing a combination of apps, devices, NFC readers, and some sort of M2M gadgets, as a game changer in non-human communications.

That’s all folks. Enjoy the slides, and see you this April.

As you know, we’re closing to pass the 6-billion-mobile-subscribers-on-earth mark (5.9 billion and counting). A very remarkable feast and left us sometimes wondering, what else to be connected… Pundits, analysts, and futurists believe, however, that there are still more room to grow.

The phrase  “50 billion connected devices by 2020″ – is one of the famous forecast by industry players. Many believe that non-human devices (machines) will be connected to the network, actively communicating – possibly later on with each other as well. Forming what we know as “machine-to-machine / M2M” communications.

Of course this will be multi billion dollar opportunities globally.

But on the flip side, M2M is a different beast to play with. Possibly requires a different skill set, strategy, marketing, product, services, and so on.

Join us this upcoming MobileMonday to network with your peers and hear yourself from our presenters – we’ll have two visionaires and two practitioners presenting:

• Date: Monday, 19 March 2012
• Time: 18.00 onwards (18.30 presentation starts)
• Venue: t.b.d. (fx Sudirman most likely)

Speakers lineup:

1. Rustam Effendie, Director, Ericsson Indonesia, “M2M in a Networked Society” – Ericsson is one of the key proponent of M2M market, consistently they have preached the 50-billion vision and shared a lot of best practises in M2M opportunities.

2. Meli Wulandari, Business Incubation, Telkomsel – she’s been actively researching M2M business opportunities in Indonesia since a while.

3. Amy, Director, CPN – she will share the good and the bad of her experience from pioneering one of the most common M2M form (i.e. fleet tracking)

As usual, please head to our registration page:

http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

This meeting is sponsored by our annual Platinum sponnsor, Research in Motion – the maker of BlackBerry handset.

See you there,

MobileMonday Indonesia

Guys, apology that I haven’t been able to post the recap… crazy busy. Nevertheless, here’s the link to the slides:

https://sites.google.com/site/idmomoslides2012/

And Frost & Sullivan team has already put their slide on SlideShare as well:

Enjoy and see you next month!

Dear MobileMonday Friends,

Welcome to the next MobileMonday event, co-hosted with Telkomsel and themed “Mobile Commerce in Digital Lifestyle: Opportunities and Challenges for 2012”

This is a very hot and interesting topic. As noted by Tomi Ahonen (Pearls #3 – Mobile Money, 2011), mobile application in commerce space has gone from a long way from a simple SMS alert for banking transactions (yr. 1996 by Merita Bank, Finland), to paying train tickets (yr. 2000 in Austria), to mobile wallet (yr. 2004 by NTT DoCoMo), to the very successful m-Pesa (yr. 2006 in Safaricom/Kenya), and the list goes on and on.

I am quoting David Birch of Consult Hyperion in his book “The Digital Money Reader (2011)”

Looking around the world now, it appears that the era of mobile payments, mobile banking and mobile money is upon us. Mobile and wireless will be central to strategy in the payments world for the foreseeable future.

Are you ready to explore this untapped opportunity? And opportunity that potentially can deliver a huge impact for our country. Joining us are speakers to discuss and share insights about various aspects of the mobile commerce space:

• Frost & Sullivan – Iwan Rachmat, Sr. Consultant for ICT Practises
• SWIFF – Angus Ogilvy, Chief Sales Officer
• IndoMOG – Donald Wihardja
• Telkomsel – Deny Abidin
• Payfone – Matt Tucker, COO

Event details:

• Date: Monday, 13 February 2012
• Time: 18.00 – finish
• Venue: Blowfish Restaurant & Bar, City Plaza, Jl. Gatot Subroto (right behind Wisma Mulia)

As usual, please register on http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

Special thanks for Research in Motion the maker of BlackBerry smartphones for their annual sponsorship.

See you there!

Dear MobileMonday friends,

“Apps” – in the era of smart phones, apps have played a very important role, and an important monetization means for telco, platform provider, and developers.

We are also living in the time of major shifts that helps in app developers: 1) there are more ways to monetize in apps – not just one-time fee to download, 2) Asian countries are on the rise for Apps – good for us, 3) apps dynamics, what leads today may not tomorrow – if you’re not yet successful, try again.

It is also, on the other hand a tough objectives – competing in apps is competing against thousand (hundred thousands) other apps.

Among those there are quite a bunch of apps that can make it to the million download mark.

Let’s learn from our fellow developers, on how to capitalize on the apps trend.

Join us in the upcoming MobileMonday:

• Date: Monday, 28 November 2011
• Time: 18.00 – onwards (presentation starts at 18.30)
• Place: fx Sudirman, The Only One Club, 5th Floor

Please kindly register on this link:

http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

Special thanks for our sponsor – Research in Motion the maker of BlackBerry!

See you there!

Hi MobileMonday!

One of the most overlooked opportunity is mobility applications in the enterprise.

According to IDC (IDC Blackbook March 2011 Ed.), enterprise IT spending in Indonesia is worth $2.89 billion in 2011, about the same size as consumer IT spending. About 28% of that spending goes to software and services, including mobility applications… and about 36% goes to devices – including post-PC-era tablets and smartphones.

So why not? Because catering for enterprise market is a different game. Take this opportunity to learn and understand this market. Join us with exciting and insightful speakers from:

• Ad-Ins (http://www.ad-ins.com)
• Pravina (http://www.mypravina.com)
• Tagit (http://www.tagitmobile.com)
• and Research In Motion

Event detail:

• Date: Monday, 10 October 2011
• Time: 18.00 – onwards (presentation starts at 18.30)
• Venue: fx Sudirman – The Only One Club @ 5th Floor

Registration link can be found here: http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

We would like to acknowledge as well and to express a special thanks for Research In Motion the inventor of BlackBerry for their annual Platinum Sponsorship in 2011/2012.

A very quick recap on the event today… it’s 1 AM, so apology if I made any typo…

A quick note before everything else though… last night’s event marked the anniversary of RIM’s sponsorship for MobileMonday Indonesia. Thank you, once again for our platinum sponsor.

Now, back to the event.

We had 6 speakers for the Buka Puasa. Surely it’s a packed event, with I think a very down-to-earth presentation, with lively and engaging presentations from our speakers. One of my best ngabuburit.

Iwan Rachmat from Frost & Sullivan shared his view on the mobile apps market/value chain. Definitely smartphones and mobile broadband are the key enablers of this new ecosystem. They have changed the fundamental of the mobile value chain. Previously, access to end users are pretty much limited and owned by operators. Nowadays, through app stores, there are several channels that content owners/developers can use.

Slideshare - Mobile apps where are you in value chain

He also shared his view on Indonesia, for example… Smartphone market in Indonesia is growing like 5 times (58%) v.s. overall handset market. Reaching up to 19 mils handset. Symbian (surprise!) and BlackBerry are still the dominant smartphone OS here… they hold still the majority of the market, by far. Of course we saw Android, Bada, and iOS as well. (I’m interested to see what will happen next year).

Johan Kremer from Research in Motion then presented a couple of updates from the BlackBerry front…

• AppWorld 3.0 coming soon to Indonesia… with Carrier Billing (finally)
• BBM6 rolling out since a couple of weeks for OS5, OS6, and upcoming OS7… going to convert 49 million BBM users worldwide into the world of BBM Social Platform
• Showing off a bunch of apps – especially local apps that drives the use of BB… also some new generation apps for the PlayBook

Then he introduced us to a very representative samples of Indonesian-go-Global developers…

Sandy Colondam of Elasitas showed us their latest creation: Menoo – a social + location-based + searchable food directory + check-in badges + deals + augmented reality + of course BBM6 enabled application.  The demo is definitely good (and great PowerPoint skill  :-D ), seemed that the UI is well thought.

He can not comment yet how many downloads… application is about to be launched. But as a food lover I think it is a good application, especially it is populated with database from JalanSutra Indonesia and the likes from Singapore + Thailand.

Kevin Osmond of Bouncity was the next on stage. They took an interesting angle for their apps – positioning it as a location based gaming platform, very powerful tools to build brand engagement.

His view: advertising is a 10-second engagement (we wouldn’t even call it an engagement), Check-in is 1-minute, but Challenge is a 15-minute engagement with a brand. So that logic is built into the games. Go Places, Do Challenge, and Get Reward. Oh, I forgot: and it is also SOCIAL.

Kevin presented a case study with a large/newer burger chain in Indonesia; I think 10 participating stores. Quite encouraging to see how the consumers get involved and willing to do challenges and engage with the brand. And eventually drive more sales (hey, that’s what matters…)

Bouncity also offer a nice analytics to measure each campaigns including its social reach.

Next we had the honor see a different kind of application. This one is from Seatech Mobile, presented by Tjuk Indarsin. They worked closely with BlueBird group to develop the first taxi ordering application in Indonesia.

The first release of the application allows us to order taxi for immediate delivery to our current location, track the taxi whereabouts (oh yeah, that’s very useful) and keep a log of all our taxi orders. Further releases will of course enhance the apps.

Seatech envision that the application will improve the existing business process in BlueBird, and in turns (the main reason) improve customers’ satisfaction. Given that 8,000 taxis or 60% of their taxis are equipped with GPS, imagine the potential…

Last but not least… Novistiar Rustandi introduced the Jakarta Founder Institute. A unique program to train high potential entrepreneurs, through mentorship and peers review. Next intake is closing fast, so register on their website if your interested.

That’s all folks! See you in the next MoMo.

Buka Bersama MobileMonday Indonesia will feature a topic dear to every developers and mobile enthusiasts: mobile apps… Hot-hot-hot space to be, complex and competitive as it can be. One analyst estimated that by 2012 the global mobile app market could worth $17.5bio with no less than 50bio downloads (Sizing App the Global Mobile App Market, Chetan Sharma, 2010). The number can go to 183bio downloads by 2015 (IDC, 2011).

Indonesia is also leading in the mobile app, even with some of the latest technology, e.g. Apps with BBM capability. So… joining us for the event are:

* Iwan Rachmat (Senior Consultant, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan) “Mobile Apps – Where Are You in The Value Chain?“
* Kevin Osmond (COO, Bouncity) on his Location-based Gaming Platform – Bouncity – need no further introduction…
* Sandy Colondam (Product Manager, Elasitas) “Menoo, what’s your menu today?” – a cool app that features augmented reality among other things
* Tjuk Indarsin (Business Development Manager, Seatech Infosys) “Book a Bird” – taxi apps are hot abroad, but nobody ever successfully launched it in Indonesia… what’s different now?

Special appearance from Johan Kremer from Research in Motion and friends from The Founder Institute Indonesia.

So be there!

* Date: Monday, 8 August 2011
* Time: 16.00 WIB (yes… 4 o’clock in the afternoon, so we can finish on time for BUBER)
* Place: The Only One Club, FX Sudirman, 5th Floor

Make sure you register and bring your confirmation email to the event. For registration please visit the link: http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

See you!

Mobile video traffic will exceed 50 percent for the first time in 2011. Mobile video traffic was 49.8 percent of total mobile data traffic at the end of 2010, and will account for 52.8 percent of traffic by the end of 2011. By the end of 2015 it will account for 66% of traffic – more than 3 times of mobile web traffic. (Cisco Visual Networking Index, 2011).

On one hand video is sooo sexy that it is de facto measurement for any network performance i.e. “can you (mobile) Internet do youtube without buffering?” AND video is wide open to various monetization (something straightforward like advertising to something more complicated like social video campaign, curation, etc.)

The other side of the coin, is that we’d better monetize video soon, otherwise the network will scream – can’t cope with the bandwidth demand. Talk to any mobile operator… they will agree

Join us in the MobileMonday networking event with our speakers:

• Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO and Co-Founder, Vuclip, “The Mobile Video Phenomenon: Unwrapping the Social Force, Monetizing the Opportunity”
• Dharma Simorangkir, APAC Strategic Marketing, NSN, “Mobile Video: The Next Big Thing?”
• HB. Naveen, Falcon Interactive
• Remko Weingarten, Dotus Indonesia, “idfilmcenter on BlackBerry Playbook”

The event details:

• Monday, 18 July 2011
• 18.00 – onwards
• The Only One Club (FX Senayan, 5th Floor) – profile @ urbanesia

Please visit the registration link: http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

Special thanks for our platinum sponsor: Research in Motion the maker of BlackBerry… and for our drinks sponsor: vuclip.

See you there!