AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana

Indonesians would break out into riots for almost any reason it seems. Previously it was because they couldn’t get tickets for the epic SEA Games football finals between our Harimau Malaya and the Garudas, now it’s because of a smartphone — specifically the Blackberry Bold 9790.

Over 3,000 BlackBerry crazed Indonesians turned-up at a special event at the Pacific Place shopping mall in Jakarta where the Bold 9790 will be sold. To make certain people came in droves, BlackBerry decided to throw in a 50% discount to the first 1000 devices sold. To up the desirability factor even further, RIM made Indonesia the first country in the world where it will sell the BlackBerry Bold 9790.

Naturally for these sort of things, people were already standing in line from the day before and the number of people had grown to well over a thousand people by the time the event was about to kick off. Things were already very tense but the tipping point happened when rumours started going around that the Bold 9790 had already sold out even before sale started. This infuriated the restless crowd which by now have grown to over 3,000 people.

In desperation the frustrated crowd started to breakdown barriers erected at the event venue to get their hands on the Bold 9790. Fearing a riot, the organisers called in the riot police. Hundreds were deployed to control the situation. The massive crowd also caused a major traffic congestion in a city where traffic is already very bad on a normal day.

While the polisi managed to stop a riot from breaking out, quite a number of people where injured in the incident, some even lost consciousness on the scene due to overcrowding. Eventually, the event had to be closed prematurely for the people’s own safety.

Them Indonesians really love their BlackBerrys don’t they.

Watch the pandemonium on video after the jump.

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	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Bold 9790 Indonesia, indonesia, rim

With the sales of BlackBerry devices expected to hit four million units in 2011, it’s easy to understand why the Indonesian government is chided by RIM’s decision to make Malaysia its Asian manufacturing hub for BlackBerry devices. After all, Indonesia is among one of the world’s largest market for BlackBerry devices.

The chief of Indonesia’s Capital Investment-Coordinating Board (BKPM) says that Malaysia’s annual BlackBerry sales is only around 400,000 units. He argues that Indonesia makes a more suitable location for RIM to set-up a manufacturing hub due to the sheer market size.

As a result, BKPM has suggested that the Indonesian government take a stand on the matter, which includes removing incentives for RIM and imposing a tax tariff on the Canadian technology firm.

Imposing taxes in a bid to influence RIM to build a factory is just plain silly we think because at the end of the day, it’s the consumers that’s going to lose out due to high prices imposed by the taxes which could lead to RIM losing interest in Indonesia as a key market and turning to India, Thailand and Vietnam to grow its market share in Asia.

At the end of the day, be it China, Malaysia or Indonesia, where RIM decides to manufacturer BlackBerry devices is not important. What is even more critical right now is for RIM to quickly stop its rapidly shrinking global market share.

[via]

	BlackBerry, Mobile Devices
	blackberry, indonesia, Malaysia, rim

It has been quite a while since we heard from U Mobile. Today, they have launched a promo on its IDD Services called IDD Bonanza.

While other telco players have been pushing hard on special rates for selected IDD country, it is obvious that U Mobile should join the bandwagon as well.  At the moment, they are having promotion for 5 selected Asian countries namely China, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and India.

The promo rate of 0.7 per second is equivalent to 42 sen/minute for both fixed and mobile lines.

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	Players on the Field, U Mobile
	018 IDD Promotion, Cheap IDD Calls, China, India, indonesia, Malaysia Mobile IDD Comparison, per second billing, Singapore, U Mobile IDD, Vietnam

Speaking about SMSes, Bernama reports Malaysia as the 3rd highest country generating SMS traffic in Asia Pacific based on the recent Christmas and New Year periods.

During this period, we sent over 1billion SMSes.

If we average the SMS cost at RM0.05/SMS, Celcom/Maxis/DiGi/U Mobile have collectively made RM50million from SMS revenue alone!

That’s around RM10million per operator within a week. Imagine how much these people make in SMS revenue in a year.

Philippines ranked number one with a whopping 2.36billion SMSes sent during the same period. Indonesia is second with 1.193billion SMSes sent.

So now you know.

[SOURCE]

	Industry in General
	indonesia, Malaysia, philippines, sms, sms revenue, sms traffic