Another thing worth to look at… and to really understand is the size of so-called broadband market in Indonesia.
Traditionally, we took the addressable market of broadband subscription as a percentage of households. We assume that one household will have one broadband connection.
For Indonesia, we are looking at 40-50 million households, and 20% of them is the addressable market (having the purchasing power, PC penetration, availability of connection, etc.), actual demand will be less (the people that will actually buy…). So all in all, it’s 2-3 million potential demand.
Now, does this change with the availability of 3.5G connections and phones (HSDPA or EV-DO) and soon (or not so soon) WiMAX? Not to mention netbooks? Phones are suddenly capable of consuming so much data. And phones are the first device on which many people experienced Internet.
Have the market shifted to personal broadband? Will we have 2-3 broadband connections per household? (YES!) Will we even see 2-3 broadband connections per person?
Looking at my own experience, I have one Speedy line at home, one HSDPA (which was office-paid — no longer, will disconnect), one EV-DO, one cellular data package, and one BlackBerry (not exactly broadband).
If I took the same math as above, then it’s suddenly 10-15 million potential demand. (or not?). Additional factors need to be taken into account (mobilephone penetration (!), mobile subscribers #, USB dongle sales, notebook penetration, netbook penetration, cellular coverage, …)
Am I biased? Or am I just simply optimistic? A lot of people shared my optimism… as you noticed the race towards the data package, but unfortunately a sign of price war is also imminent… (could it be driven by the pessimists that fear of market saturation?!)
Let’s do the more precise math tomorrow. Or just buy that Pyramid report….
