Indonesia is a country that vasts an archipelago in Southeast Asia. With the population of over 260 million in 2016, it's the largest in the region and the fourth largest in the world. As mobile internet penetrates the nation more deeply, Indonesia has certainly become one of the most attractive market in Asia.
In the last couple of years, the global mobile market has exploded and also affected Indonesia. As a result, the number of mobile users in the country increased rapidly. For example, SIM subscription in Indonesia is at 326 million, a lot more than its population. What this means, on average, each mobile phone users owns two SIM cards.
But out of the 85 percent of the population that own mobile devices, only 43 percent are using smartphones, and about 88 million people are connected to the internet. While only a third of Indonesians are actively using the internet, that is still a lot of people connected. And as for the social media landscape, about 80 million Indonesians are actively using at least one social media network.
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are three most popular platforms in the country. LINE and WhatsApp are taking a huge step forward as the chatting apps of choice, replacing BBM which was previously popular. Path is also gaining good traction.
Among the audience, Indonesians use social media networks not only for social communication. A large number of users are companies and e-commerce entities as well as small businesses which use social networks as a way for getting attention. Many of those small businesses, especially online shops are heavily dependent on social network as they don't have their own business websites.
Indonesian internet users are relatively young. Almost 90 percent of Indonesia's social network users are under the age of 34. About 54 percent of them are between the age of 16 and 24, according to eMarketer.
Most of Indonesia's internet users reside in urban areas like in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Banten.
The Undisputed Facebook
Just like almost in any part of the globe, Facebook is the most popular social media network in Indonesia. About three out of four Indonesians using the internet are also Facebook users. That number is actually higher as a percentage of total social media users in Indonesia which is about 94 percent. This made Indonesia the highest Facebook penetration rates in the Southeast Asia, counting at 78 million users.
Just to show how important Indonesia is to Facebook, and Facebook to Indonesia, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and founder and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have met a couple of times discussing how the company can extend the opportunities of the internet in the country.
Runner-Up: Instagram
Instagram that has been acquired by Facebook, is growing its popularity by margins in Indonesia, making it the second most popular behind Facebook for young generations. 69 percent of Indonesian mobile internet users aged 16-35 use Instagram on average per week.
The highest demographic to use Instagram is at the age of 20-25, which is about 73.8 percent.
What makes the platform interesting is that Indonesian don't use Instagram just to share personal shareable and memorable photos. Many users are actually online shopping accounts. Their number exploded, surpassing funny and joke accounts as well as travel post photos.
InstaMeets are also hugely popular in Indonesia. One of the largest Worldwide InstaMeets was held in Jakarta in March 2015.
The Relentless Twitter
As the microblogging platform popular for real-time engagement, simple and fast, Twitter comes third on the most popular social media network in Indonesia. With 17 million users, Twitter is having a huge role in the market. Twitter also has opened an office in the capital city Jakarta in March 2015.
Knowing that Indonesia is one huge country with huge potential and users, Twitter launched its self-serving ads a month later, specifically targeting small- to medium-sized businesses which accounts to millions of users.
Twitter's presence, while coming far behind Facebook and Instagram, is still undisputed. The social media platform is widely popular in politics talks as well as in business. For example, it has been credited for its role in the Indonesian presidential election in 2014.
The Path For The Netizens
Path is a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service. It's popularity is increasing rapidly that the archipelago is now representing one of the company's strongest market. Path's focuses on Indonesia comes at a time when the firm is struggling to regain market traction and relevance in most other parts of the world.
Path has failed to live up to its initial hype after launching in November 2010. But in Indonesia is where the startup can have a strong foothold with over 4 million active users.
Indonesia is very much a mobile-first country with many of the population citing a smartphone as the device they use most to connect to the internet. Path is enigmatic and is specifically designed for mobile. The strategy came in line with the market. Furthermore, with a more limited friends opposed to Facebook where users can have thousands of friends, Path is the little social media app that is meant to share things among a smaller number of group in a chronological manner.
It's popularity also attracted Bakrie Group to invest $25 million in a Series C round on January 11th, 2014. This happened two months after Path founder and CEO Dave Morin visited Indonesia in November 2013. Bakrie Group that has less than 1 percent stake at the company is added into the list of other investors that include: Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, Redpoint Venture Partners and First Round Capital.
Mobile Chat
Instant messaging has been an inseparable in our digital life. Even before smart devices have come to existence, people loved to talk via chat boxes and SMS. After the emergence of instant messaging apps, human's communication rapidly increased, and that is thanks to cheaper mobile devices and more affordable mobile data pricing.
Looking deep into the Indonesians, there are several chat services that became favorites. The three are WhatsApp, LINE and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Interestingly, one app might be superior to others only in certain aspects while others were dominated by different application.
For example: WhatsApp is said to be the fastest and most stable app. The record then followed by BBM and then LINE at the last. BBM however, is still considered as the best application to share broadcast message, and also the best for privacy because users use PIN instead of phone numbers. LINE followed at the second position, while WhatsApp is the last. And as for video call feature, WhatsApp and LINE came out a whole margin better than BBM. LINE is considered to have the best emoticons and stickers, followed by BBM and WhatsApp as the last.
As for popularity, BBM is still installed on 87 percent of all Android devices as of April 2016. While many other countries have abandoned BBM for other more popular instant messaging app, BBM is still highly popular in the country.
Facebook Messenger is also a popular service in the country. But since the app is related to Facebook, and consumes a lot more resources to be sufficiently stable and great on cheap mobile phones, its popularity is somehow limited to medium- to high-end smartphones which compromise to a smaller amount of users.
Other instant messaging app such as Viber, KakaoTalk, WeChat, Telegram and others are following the three by margins.
A Mobile-First Country
As a developing country, Indonesia can't be underestimated. Closing in to 300 million people in population with a yearly growth rate of over 1 percent, many of them are starting to use the internet for the first time. What this means is that, there are a lot of potential that is still about to rise in the country.
Teenagers that are making up most of the newcomers, are mostly using smartphones to access the internet for the first time.
Knowing that more users will come from mobile rather than from traditional PCs and laptops, websites and web services have come to understand how to approach this market. In a report, it was concluded that more than 70 percent of web pages in Indonesia were served on mobile phones, and more than 90 percent of Indonesia's social network users access their favorite platform via their mobile devices.
Mobile internet advertisement spending in Indonesia accounts to 25 percent of all digital spending in 2016. And as for online transaction, while most are still using COD (Cash On Delivery) or bank transfer, the number is rising rapidly as more people are preferring online shopping than to physically come to stores to buy certain goods such as garments, food, electronics and households.