Telkomsel Remains Dominated by Nokia Feature Phones, Windows Phone Grew Fastest

Asking about the composition of Telkomsel subscribers based on the mobile platform they use? Arief Pradetya, Division Head, Device Bundling & Customization Strategy Telkomsel openly stated the make up of the company's 125 million customers of the largest mobile operator in Indonesia right now. Liputan 6 reported that 47% or close to 60 million subscribers use Nokia feature phones. An entirely unsurprising fact which serves as a guide for developers to see their market audience.

This fact clearly underlines why the 2G frequency cannot be removed or reduced because most of the consumers are still within this category. The smartphone market, while being the prima donna for the future, remains a very small percentage. To The Jakarta Post Arief said that the composition of the smartphone subscribers is made up of nine million BlackBerry users, four million on Android, 450,000 on iOS, and 125,000 on Windows Phone. Added up, the entire smartphone base makes up for less than 20 percent of all subscribers.

Pradetya clearly stated that throughout 2012 the most popular smartphones are Android phones by Samsung. It's not a surprise then that Telkomsel decided to bundle Android phones into its deals, making up 70 percent of all its packaged bundles on offer. Most of these bundles cost less than Rp 3 million.

As an operator with the largest subscriber base, Telkomsel's data surely cannot be ignored by mobile developers in the country. Once again the Asha/S40 market holds the largest potential, at last in the foreseeable future, especially for developers who focus on volume for the application sales. For smartphones, it's clear why BlackBerry and Android remains a priority even though in many respects, development for iOS devices must be considered.

The Windows Phone market, while still very small, cannot be ignored. Pradetya said that between January and August of this year, the growth of the Windows Phone user base reached 137%, dominated by the low end series such as the Lumia 520 and 620.

Mobile developers, are you certain of the mobile platform that you have chosen for Indonesia?