Mobile Development Day Event and A Little Story on Internet/Mobile Market in Medan – Indonesia

Last Saturday, not only in Yogyakarta, but in Medan was also enlivened by a various events related to technology world and Internet. At least there are 3 events that I know, Medan Mobile Game Development Day sponsored by Nokia, Android event and idbloglicious roadshow which was held by idBlognetwork.

Unfortunately for the event associated with Android I did not have the info and was not present at the event, while for two other events, I had the opportunity to stop by and talk with the organizers.

For Mobile Development Day event, the event was organized by the local committee of the WebMedia, a computer training service provider, website development and IT solutions. The event was attended by 400 participants from various backgrounds, ranging from students, vocational, practitioners and the general public. The event held at the Hotel Madani, Gelora Ballroom, Jl. Sisingamangaraja no. 1 – Medan was presenting five speakers include Narenda Wicaksono – Developer Manager of Nokia Development, Kresna Dewantara – Chief Technical Officer of Armanovus Indonesia, Yuandra I. and Paramitha H. – Winner of Mobile Game DevWar Bandung, Firstman M – President of NICE, Shieny Aprillia – COO Agate Studio dan Erick Kurniawan – Co-founder NICE.

The seminar and workshops materials were on opportunities for mobile application development. Each speaker in accordance with its capacity explained about the opportunities in the mobile industry, success stories, including workshops to create mobile applications, such as using the Qt framework and OVI App Wizard (Krishna and Erick). Other speakers (Yuandra – Paramitha and Shieny) took a role in explaining to the participants on how to develop mobile games, comes with experience and tips sharing and ways to make mobile gaming applications such as determining the idea, game play, characters and how to publish it on Nokia application store. The event also comes with an explanation about the community and also the inauguration of NICE Medan.

Meanwhile, one other event that I attended (even only briefly), is the seminar and workshop of idBloglicious. This event also reflects the interest of Medan people about access and various services on the internet. Attended by 120 people, the committee said 20% of them are already have a blog and 80% have not. But the enthusiasm attending the event held at the Grand Palladium Mall Food Court can give an idea. Some bloggers in Medan also get their income from online business with a blog, like adsense, etc.. While it is true that the level of literacy and resilience in managing the blog is still quite low. People in Medan is including consumer character who quickly get bored, and they also influenced by the trend of big cities like Jakarta.

Frankly my time in Medan was not long and not enough to be able to find and dig more deeply about the condition of the digital world, technology or the internet there. But at least I met some people who has been a long time engaged in the digital world in Medan and get an idea about the development of the digital world (internet/mobile) there.

One of them is Eko Purwanto, a founder of the WebMedia, partner of Nokia event in Medan. We talked about how the development of digital industry – Internet/mobile in Medan. He explained that Internet-based businesses in Medan had quite a lot, for example for buying and selling online, though not many people have their own online store, usually the seller is selling through social networks such as Facebook, and the promotion done through social networks and blogs.

For Internet startup in Medan, Mr. Purwanto was also explained that the development is quite good, however, the city which is also the home town of Batara Eto, Willson Cuaca, Chandra from East Venture holds opportunities for the development of mobile, although it still new and predicted to begin to develop.

For me, the developments that occurred in Medan is similar to what happens in 3-4 years ago in Bandung. It is also shared by Mr. Eko, from the discussion, we agreed that the developments in Medan is similar to bandung 3-4 years ago, rapidly growing level of interest and those who are interested in is still in the process of seeking information and develop basic knowledge, literacy rates are still low but continues to grow. It also can be proved from the interest of participants who attend the events in Medan. For information, the Mobile Development Day event attracted 400 participants at a cost of Rp 100,000. There’s even a student from SMK at Rantau Prapat (8 hours from Medan) that high-spiritedly followed the seminar and workshop.

Blogs as a medium to recognize various Internet services is also showed from the participants of seminars and workshops mobile development. Mr. Purwanto said that 80% of participants estimated to already have a blog. Facebook also continue to be the most popular, from my observations during the event, approximately 40% of participants did not forget to open up their Facebook accounts.

For Internet access, from a discussion with some friends there, Medan has a big number of internet cafes and game centers. The visitors are mostly teenagers, the internet speed that I experienced myself in the hotel is also quite good. People in Medan is also known as a consumptive one, they are trends literated, such as the Blackberry and the iPhone, though still owned by certain people. But from the participants that I saw, they also use BlackBerry, iPhone and Android, but the feature phone is still owned most of the participants.

If we look at data from the Rama writings in DailySocial some time ago (which cites a chart of the research from Marketeers magazine) Medan still has a low use of Internet, at least if compared with the city of Banjarmasin, Surabaya and Semarang, but the level of laptop ownership is large enough, again I saw similar conditions with the city of Bandung 3-4 years back, before the trend replaced by tablet.

Medan has a huge potential, at least from the enthusiasm shown at several events, which was held on the same day. Even the Nokia sponsored mobile event has become one of the event with most participants, whereas the cost was big enough. Although there are price discounts and other conveniences for certain participants, such as the education community. I got to thinking if such event was held in Bandung, even with more speakers, will not attract as many participants like this. But for me it show the enthusiasm of Medan people in various matters relating to the use and maximization of technology, especially internet and mobile, though, as I described above, the level of capability and maximize the opportunities yet to be developed.

If the big cities such as Bandung and now several other cities such as Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Malang and Bali are starting to show its potential for internet based startup, Medan can be, within the next 2-3 years will be a city that has a huge potential. The market is still very big in Indonesia, and this opportunity should be utilized, not only by technology companies that have been established, but also by the Indonesian startups.