Blackberry Craze in Indonesia

Blackberry Corner @ Mall Ambassador

Nowadays, many questions and statements are addressed to me regarding Blackberry, from those who assume I have it already (“What is your PIN?“), to those who worship Blackberry or should I say ambassadors of Research In Motion? 🙂  (“Hari gini ga punya BB?“,”You should get yourself a BB“). At the same time, I also witness how Blackberry take Indonesia market by storm. Not difficult, number of new Blackberry users from my colleagues at work and also friends says it all already. Not to mention the long queue of people in shopping mall outside Blackberry outlets. So what is so special with Blackberry itself that one by one, people are switching to this device? If few years ago you see people carrying two devices (GSM and CDMA), now you will see two or three devices (with one of them is Blackberry).

The growth of Blackberry in Indonesia is indeed phenomenal. Recent report suggested the growth is at incredible 500%, with total sales to date of 1.2 millions, making Indonesia among the top countries of Blackberry Users (along with the US and Canada).  Positioned as a smart phone with specialties in push email, this device target market is supposed to be those who need to be connected to the email all the time, i.e. business people. Are we saying that number of business people in Indonesia is far bigger than other countries? Certainly not.

One of the logical explanations behind the craze for blackberry in Indonesia is that the internet infrastructure is so poor that people switch to mobile broadband for internet access. Maybe yes. But there are so many devices with 3.5G connectivity capability which cost far lower than Blackberry. Why not them? The monthly fee for the unlimited internet is also quite similar (150K per month). Touch screen smart phones such as i-Phone or Google Nexus One with larger screens offer better experience in internet browsing than BB. So this argument does not stand.

Another argument is that Indonesian people are not comfortable with touch screen and prefer Qwerty pad. This is true. Qwerty pads indeed offer much comfortable in texting. Well, we have many other qwerty pad devices, particularly those China-made. They are also equipped with internet access capability. Why not them? So this argument, again, does not stand.

Now, the only distinct feature which makes Blackberry stands out against other devices is the Blackberry Messenger (BBM). This one for sure is the killer. It allows fellow BB users to send text, free of charge. To many people, this feature is the main selling point, citing that it saves them money on monthly Telecommunication bills. Well, on top of the cost of millions of rupiahs on the device at the first place, the monthly fee, say at 100K per month, I would reckon that those who say BB saves them money have monthly average spending on telecommunication bills above IDR 200K. To some people, this might be true, but to some others, sorry, you are just using the economical reason excuse to shield away from your craze about Blackberry 🙂

The rising popularity of social networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and also the popular chatting tool Yahoo Messenger also plays part in the increasing demand of Blackberry. I can bet that there are more than 95% of Blackberry user having Facebook account. Coincidentally, the growth of Facebook users in Indonesia is also one of the fastest in the world. Now, what’s that all about?

Judging from the popularity of new package from telecommunication provider (50K per month for Yahoo Messenger, Facebook and Tweeter access only), and combining all the reasons above, the conclusion I can derive on the rising popularity of Blackberry : Indonesian people just love to chat, text, Facebook-ing and Tweeter-ing 🙂

The craze for blackberry will still last. And well, for now, I’m still not switching to Blackberry, but I don’t rule myself out to be taken by Blackberry storm in the upcoming times.  🙂

Read Full Post »

Obama for Good?

“I’m going home to watch Obama’s inauguration ceremony” said my colleague when he made an earlier-than-normal office-home trip yesterday. What I mean in “normal” here is of course passing office hour already, but compared to his normal time, it was somehow “earlier”. Later in the evening when I logged in to facebook, I saw some friends’ status about the watching the event. Well, those are just two very simple examples of the enthusiasm about Obama.

Obama is indeed phenomenal. The world cheered his victory over rival McCain in the election. His inauguration ceremony yesterday attracted millions of people. Americans in the United States flooded the capital, Washington, to attend the ceremony. Overseas Americans held the gathering event to watch the ceremony. Non US citizens tuned in to television for live coverage. It must have been recorded in the history book as one of the most followed event, the day when Obama sworn in as the 44th President of The United States.

It’s normal for people all over the world to feel hopeful of Obama, following catastrophic times brought by Bush in his eight-year regime, and his “Change” campaign theme. Particularly for Indonesian people, the feel of joy and enthusiasm is understandable given the fact that Obama spent some of his childhood in Jakarta. But personally I think the over-joy feeling and optimistic hope over the relationship with US should be avoided, not to mention some exaggerating celebrations.

Obama himself have not spoken much about his childhood in Indonesia. Well, perhaps this might change as time goes by, if the argument is that it would hamper his chance of being elected if he spoke about it. But the most important point to note is that he is the President of The United States, not Republic of Harmony or Kingdom of World Peace. As far as he concerns, the United State of America and American people will remain the top priority. The decisions he made will surely based on the welfare and the best interest of America, even though let’s say the decision is disadvantaging Indonesia or other countries.

Well, perhaps it’s just me being skeptical. I’m more than happy to be proven wrong. The Gaza saga involving Hamas and Israel could provide some insights. It’s interesting to see the stand-point of Obama on this issue, considering Israel is US lifelong ally and best friend.

Read Full Post »

Election Campaign Tips?

(picture from Yahoo!)

Nov 4, 2008 will be marked as one of the most important dates in American history as Barack Hussein Obama, 47, becomes the first African-American President in the history of the country, in a landslide victory over Republican rival John McCain, a Vietnamese war veteran. The victory has already been predicted, but still it’s a historic win not only due to Obama’s background (Kenyan-born father) but also the issues revolving his relationship with terrorist and a socialist tag from his rival as results of his economic plan.

I was not particularly interested in politics, not to mention politics in United States. But somehow late last year, the United States politics caught my eye through the race of Presidential Nomination in Democrat. Well, I hadn’t heard Obama’s name before, not until his sudden rise in popularity in the tight race against Hillary Clinton whom I know better and whom I think, is one of the most powerful and smart women in the world. As I have a habit of going to Yahoo! portal to access email, I accidentally got interested in US Election after the Democrat race had always been the headline in Yahoo! homepage. When Obama scored victory over the former first lady, the headline became more often.

To me personally, some notes I’ve taken from this election result :

1. Change will always be a “popular” theme to attract voters for first time runner. The word “Change” is used by Obama in his campaign, both in face to face against Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Against the two, this powerful word lifts him to victory. The theme is effective, but Clinton and McCain, to their advantage, can’t make use of this word in their campaign. Not when Clinton is a former first lady who is associated with the past power (although Bill Clinton didn’t perform as bad as George Bush), and McCain is a Republican candidate, the same party as the unpopular President Bush. Need to note that the theme “Change” has also brought SBY to President seat in 2004 election. Sadly, this theme can only be used once. Obama can’t use it in four years time if he’s running the election again, and SBY also can’t use it in next year election.

2. Majority people consider “economy” far more important than other issues such as security or patriotism. At the end of the day, it’s the economy that matters. People care much about economy ahead of patriotism, security, etc. If economy is secure, then they will consider security and other issues. That’s the reason behind the re-election of Bush in 2004 (thanks to terrorist issue). The bad shape of economy under Bush has driven people to ditch McCain who is perceived as having the same economy policy (although it might not be true) and instead vote for Obama, even though Obama is rumoured to have close relationship with terrorist. Thus, in order to get re-elected, the running President needs to emphasize on economic issue. If there’s significant improvement in economy, it’s likely that people will vote him again. If economy is okay, you can try other issues. If economy is in deep shit, don’t bother to run for re-election! 😀 That’s why, up till this moment, there’re still people saying that it was better in former President Soeharto’s regime than current condition. People seems to forget all the corruption, collution and nepotism that’s because they think under Soeharto’s era, life was easier.. life was better. Singapore is another perfect example. “No freedom of speech, no this, no that, Lee Kuan Yew’s clan power ? No problem, as long as the economy is in great shape” (quoted from my singaporean relative).

3. Socialism still have place in people’s heart, even in the most advanced countries like United States, moreover in bad times. Despite gung-ho attack from McCain on Obama’s economic policy to cut taxes for medium – low income earner and raise taxes at the same time, and label of “socialist who spreads the wealth”, Obama still take it. To some extent, the attack from McCain’s side is somewhat exaggerating, I think Obama’s policy is indeed some sort of socialism idea, although not that extreme. But perhaps this is just a minor hypothesis, still to be proven though.

4. Instead of attacking your rival’s idea, it’s better to come up with your own idea and plan and defend it. I think this is the most crucial point which leads Obama to his journey in becoming 44th President of the United States. McCain didn’t show his idea and plan. All he did was just to attack and attack Obama’s idea.

I’m not an election strategist nor consultant, but perhaps politicians who will compete in next year election might find this article useful ? hahahaha… :p

Read Full Post »

Check & Re-check!

Sounds like one of the infotainments which are now spreading like mushroom in the rainy season ? No no.. this one is not about celebrities’ gossip, divorce, marriage or whatsoever. Check and Re-check, area that I’d like to highlight is the quality of the news, articles or writings published for public consumptions. Sometimes I wonder if there’re some sanity checks performed for the writings before they are being published. Well, I expect so, especially if they are coming from reputable organizations. If the writings are published in personal blog (which is understandable that there’s no stringent checking), it’s considered okay in my opinion.

Today I receive an email from Mandala Air about year-end airfare promo ( I subscribe for the marketing offer news since I love to hunt for cheap ticket ). This is the screen-shot of homepage :

Note the “not that serious” but amusing error in above information ? Hahaha.. If you can’t figure out then perhaps you can ask a primary school student to tell you about it. Notice now ? Well well.. How many days are there in September ? 30 right ? Then how come the offer is up till 31 September!

This one is not so serious. I ever encountered much more serious and horrendous errors, also from reputable organizations and in other formats as well, such as newspaper article (including top national newspaper publisher).

Despite all the checking and editing process, sometimes errors are still there. I think that’s why organizations are setting up quality checking and assurance function in daily operations. Imagine if this function is not there ? One consequence for sure that we will surely see more errors! 🙂

Read Full Post »

Dirty Politics ?

If one asks you, “how do you describe politic in one word ?” How would your answer be ?
Dirty ? Power ? Disgrace ? Interesting ?
The answers might vary, but I guess the first one would be one of the top answers.
How wrong is it with politics anyway ? Why some people despise it so much ?

Personally I’m not against politic, but somehow I don’t see myself involve in politics. Haha.. not when I’m not a good speaker. Not when I don’t deliver excellent speech. Not when I don’t like being in the spotlight just like the glamorous life of celebrities. An observer might be more suitable for me I think.

Speaking about politics, I’m wondering if there’re still “clean” politicians out there. There must be people as clean as the white paper, but once they step in into the politic stage, will they stay as clean as they were and not contaminated by those filthy ? Hmm.. not sure.

Newspaper headlines in the past weeks have been revolving around corruption scandal involving former parliament member from PDIP, Agus Condro. Another dark side of Indonesia politics. He bluntly admitted receiving a sum of 500 million rupiahs after the election of Miranda Goeltom as the senior deputy of Central Bank Governor. Case open! And it was identified that the practice has been there for so long time.. Interesting! Looking forward to the resolution of this case.

The funny thing to me is why Agus Condro didn’t admit it earlier. Why he should wait after so many years to come out with such statement. Hmm.. don’t know, maybe it’s only now that he suddenly receive some lights and is remorseful of what he did. But it sounds more like someone who tries to blow thing up when he doesn’t get what he want. Hehe.. conspiracy theory ?

Read Full Post »

Distorting Information?

Into fifth days of Olympics, one routine I do everyday (or twice a day) is checking on official olympic website to have some updates, medal tally, record breaking, as well as Indonesian athletes’ progress. Apart from this, I also check my personal email in Yahoo! by which I usually type http://www.yahoo.com in the address bar of my browser, followed by clicking the email icon. Today, I find an interesting and amusing thing. Distorting or misleading information ?

Look at this screen scrap from Yahoo!

Anything wrong with the above ? Not really.. Just notice that the way they present the information is slightly different from previous days.

A moment later, I visited official website of Olympics, and this is what I saw.

haha… Gotcha! See the difference ?

I don’t know why Yahoo! is changing the way the information is presented. I remember yesterday and days before, they showed the # Gold medal instead of total medal (including silver and bronze). Maybe they want to “save US face” or in Chinese “Ai Mian Zi?” given the fact that each day the Chinese are getting further and further away?

Maybe, some might argue that this is not distorting information, since US is indeed clinching 21 medals to date. But for me, it’s just funny. If you want to stick to # total medal, you should have done it since the first day. Strange, isn’t it ? Never have I heard that sport competition is decided by total number of medals.

Your view ?

Read Full Post »