Advan has done something which is inevitable to be done, especially by hardware vendors. The local brand decided to develop its own online store to support its smartphones. This move of Advan has reportedly attracted a fleet of local developers to promote their works at its very own Advan Store. The move has also put Advan Store in the same market as Samsung Galaxy Store and Baidu mobomarket.
According to Informa Telecoms & Media, as being stated at Indotelko last Sunday (12/10), Indonesia is included into top 15 of countries that can push the growth of Value Add Service (VAS) data service based on an excellent assessment of market’s potential. Being aware of that potential, Advan has never stopped encouraging local developers to put their products at its Advan Store and get a national-scale coverage. This initiation got a warm welcome from local developers. In fact, some of them, including Fotodroid, Saung Bandung, and Oohm, assisted Advan in designing the online store.
“Advan Store gives us more credit from the consumers. Since we compete in price, there should be something that makes us special,” Tjandra Lianto, Advan’s Marketing Director, told Indotelko (11/10).
Advan Store itself is an exclusive online marketplace which can only be accessed by Advan users. In this regard, Advan Vandroid S5J will reportedly be the first Advan product to get this marketplace installed as a default app. Thereafter, the marketplace will be pre-installed in all of Advan’s products. Just like Mobomarket, Advan Store doesn’t require users to get through series of complicated registration processes to get to download and use the apps. Advan claims that its Advan Store has featured no less than 150 thousands apps which have been downloaded thousands of times.
Furthermore, Tjandra Lianto guaranteed the Advan and Advan Store users’ safety and convenience. The company has even invited experts to conduct a series of tests in Shenzhen, China, to prove that Advan and Advan Store is truly safe and convenient to use.
For monetizing strategy, Advan models Baidu Mobomarket’s carrier billing scheme to accommodate the purchase of paid apps or in-app purchase. This payment method is indeed much simpler and more efficient than the credit cards.
“The birth of new apps will let device ecosystem to keep growing. Apps will indeed be a captivating industry in the future, since there are more and more people use smartphones,” Tjandra Lianto added.
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