The Potential of Gaming Industry in Indonesia

Surely you still remember the poll that we did a few weeks ago about Founder/CEO and Startup of the Year 2011? If you notice, this year we are much impressed with the many activities in the gaming industry in Indonesia, especially for mobile and social gaming.

There are a lot of activities from the companies like Agate Studio, Touchten, Nightspade, Forging Labs, Garuda Games, Games Guava, Cantigiarina, and many other local companies specialized in making games. Not to mention foreign companies like Gameloft and Gree, making their ways into the Indonesian market.

From here it seems clear enough that the gaming industry in Indonesia is growing rapidly. The market is big enough for games producers and players.

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The Role of Advertising in Google’s Mobile Strategy

There’s an excellent piece written by Kyle Baxter about Google’s Android strategy. The gist of it is something I’ve always told people about. Google isn’t that interested in building a mobile platform per se. What it wants is another avenue to deliver its advertising because it is arguably the largest advertising channel company, if not one of the largest, in the world, as more than 96% of its $29.3 billion revenue in 2010 came from advertising.

When the company’s aim is to deliver as many ads as possible, it would not be interested in building a paid environment for consumers like what Apple and Amazon do. Consumers see advertising for free, developed and paid for by advertisers. Everything that Google does is built to serve or deliver advertising and thanks to the size and revenue of the company, it has the ability to do just that.

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Goodbye 2011, Welcome 2012

2011 will be over in just a few hours, last year was an exciting year for digital, internet, web, mobile and startup scene in Indonesia. In addition to appearing new startup, the year 2011 also marked with several falls of startup and slowly-moving startup.

In this article I want to give a brief overview of some of the interesting things that happened during 2011 in the world of technology, especially startup, and try to propose 4 + 1 predictions that will happen in 2012.

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From Silicon Valley to Bandung

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Arip Tirta. Arip founded and became director at UrbanIndo.com. Before returning to Indonesia, Arip was Director of Investment Analysis and Strategy for Hercules Technology Growth Capital. In this post, Arip tells us about his experience working in Palo Alto, his decision to return to Indonesia and the reason why he chose Bandung to pursue his own dream.

My name is Arip Tirta. I recently returned to Indonesia after spending 15 years in the USA. I received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics of Computation from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Master of Science in Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics from Stanford University.

Prior to my arrival in Indonesia, I was the Director of Investment Analysis and Strategy for Hercules Technology Growth Capital (Nasdaq: HTGC), which is a specialty finance company that provides both debt and equity to technology start-ups predominantly in the US. Hercules was co-founded by Manuel Herinquez who has over 25 years of experience in venture capital and venture lending. Prior to co-founding Hercules, he was one of the Managing Directors at VantagePoint Venture Partners.

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Why E-banking and Mobile Banking Are Not That Appealing to Consumers?

Editor’s note : After Rama wrote about desktop vs mobile banking, we have a guest post by Dolly Surya Wisaka on the same matter but from the perspective of his experience and opinion on using and developing both e-banking and mobile banking systems, as well as suggestions on how to make these services more appealing for users.

Intrigued after reading the e-banking vs m-banking post on Detikinet and DailySocial, a statement quoted from one of the executives of Bank Mandiri that might show no harm for common people. But I feel obliged to point out my concerns regarding the misuse of the information to give the wrong conclusion.

In this opportunity I would like to share my thoughts on online and mobile banking based on my own experience and this discussion will be limited to those services only so we can focus on the issue.

First, let’s describe e-banking and mobile banking.

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What Lies Ahead for Digital Music Industry in Indonesia

This is a guest post by Ario Tamat. Ario worked in the digital music industry in Indonesia from 2003 to 2010, and currently works in the movie and TV industry in Vietnam. Keep up with him on Twitter at @barijoe or his blog on http://barijoe.wordpress.com

After reading Aulia’s post, I felt that I needed to add to it with some more facts and insight, and throw in my own opinion about the much-discussed yet perceived-as-slow-to-develop state of the music industry’s move to the digital medium in Indonesia.

I have written extensively on where the industry should go – digital or otherwise – and fronted several tough questions around the RBT controversy, so I won’t revisit those issues.

Let’s get through some points in the article first:

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Scoop Partners With Samsung Delivers Android eReading App

Scoop recently announce partnership with Samsung in order to expand their ebook service through Samsung Android devices via eReading app available on Samsung Apps.

Based on the information at Samsung Apps website, the application eReading now supports Scoop. This eReading app is developed by Samsung as a interactive newsstand-like app for Samsung Android users, complete with magazines, tabloids and ebooks available for users to read.

I contacted Willson Cuaca, CEO of Apps Foundry (Scoop developer) and Cuaca told me that Scoop will be bundled with Samsung eReading app and will add a “eReading powered by Scoop” in it. The previous version of eReading app is now replaced by Scoop’s engine for all Samsung Android devices.

For now, Scoop-powered eReading app is only for Galaxy Note users, while the version for Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will soon be released and available for public use.

Previously, Scoop is exclusively targeting iPad user before finally launch a iPhone/iPod Touch app. But now, apparently they’re aggresively targeting the whole tablet/smartphone market by partnering with Samsung. Cuaca also confirms that they will be releasing a generic Android version of Scoop besided eReading which is exclusive for Samsung Android users.

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Cloud Computing Will be a Trend in Indonesia in 2012?

In the last couple months, we have detected several movements of cloud computing services in Indonesia. The first one is Joyent Cloud, in partnership with Malaysia-based Anise Asia. Joyent Cloud and Anise Asia brought a seminar couple weeks ago and tried to deliver information about cloud computing advantages and is myths. Joyent Cloud is one of the pioneer in cloud computing and now their services is utilized by several big startups, including LinkedIn.

The next one is Amazon Web Services, which was giving their support for e27 and StartLokal’s meetup few days ago. And the latest is CBN that developing cloud computing data center assisted by Brocade switching technology. For local ecosystem, you definitely still remember about Biznet and its cloud computing pioneer.

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The Key Success for Mobile Game Developers

Editorial note’s: Industry is growing in Indonesia, including the game industry. In this Guest Post article, Narenda Wicaksono wrote his view about the key success needed by mobile game developer, completed with his experience on his relation with game developers.

Two weeks ago, I was asked by a national TV in my capacity of IT observer to answer the challenge faced by local developers to develop mobile games. Considering the limited time, I really want to share it in my short article to motivate you on who are interested to work on this game industry.

Every app store will agree that game is the most popular premium (paid) app. However, developers should not be complacent since there are many challenge should be faced.

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Anti-trend: Accessing Internet Banking via Desktop is More Popular than via Mobile

Lately, we are always been surprised by mobile industry in Indonesia that is increasing fast, supported by the fast growth of users, even compared to developed country. Some statistics shows that Indonesia is on the top 5 of countries with the highest mobile growth. The surprising thing is that the banking transaction shows the opposite trends.

Recently, Bank Mandiri stated that the number of mobile banking users on their platform is less than internet banking via desktop (full web) users. By now, Bank Mandiri has 11 million customers and the adoption of e-Banking increases very fast.

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