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obile phone operator PT XL Axiata has invested approximately US$1 million in constructing a virtual store, called myXL Store, which the operator expects to boost the sales of data packages as well as ring-tones.

Revie Sylviana, general manager for content and application at XL, said that a significant portion of the investment went into acquiring the necessary hardware, such as servers, and hiring the right application developers to create the store.

She added that subscribers could access the virtual store by downloading the myXL Store application available via the Facebook App Center and the Google Play Store for Android smartphone users.

“We have decided to make the application available through Facebook because 30 percent of the 50 million Internet users with Facebook accounts are XL subscribers,” she told The Jakarta Post.

Web information company, Alexa, ranks Facebook as the second most visited website, while, the Internet World Stats show that the country had more than 51 million Facebook subscribers by the end of 2012.

Revie said that subscribers wanting to utilize the service had to register for mobile banking services at their bank as the application would deduct money from subscribers’ bank accounts to complete the transactions.

She said the operator had not set a target for the increase in transactions they wished to see through the virtual store. “We are very much still in the user-acquisition phase,” she said. However, the operator aims to acquire, in the next six months, the 1.4 million subscribers who have “liked” the operator’s Facebook page.

She noted that in their previous application, which was not linked to social networking sites, subscribers spent three minutes on average browsing through the products and services on display and spent an average of Rp 3,000 (30 US cents) on purchasing content, which included data and ring-tones.

“But people spend 13-15 minutes on average per day on social networks,” adding that the additional time could translate into more sales.

By the end of 2012, the operator saw a 50 percent growth in revenue from data service as data traffic more than doubled. As reported in their 2012 final financial report, the operator recorded 15 percent year-on-year revenue growth to Rp 21.3 trillion. “We are creating demand because through this social networking website [Facebook], we can also provide subscribers with information on our latest promotions,” she noted.