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WeChat sees fastest growth in Indonesia

Many more Indonesians are opting for mobile-messaging services, driven by the skyrocketing number of mobile-device owners in the country, a recent survey by London-based research firm GlobalWebIndex has shown

Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, November 27, 2014

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WeChat sees fastest growth in Indonesia

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any more Indonesians are opting for mobile-messaging services, driven by the skyrocketing number of mobile-device owners in the country, a recent survey by London-based research firm GlobalWebIndex has shown.

The survey, which was conducted from the first to the third quarter of this year, has shown that the number of mobile-messaging application users in Indonesia grew by 45 percent this year compared to last year.

The survey was carried out in 32 countries worldwide by polling 170,000 Internet users, with around 4,000 individuals coming from Indonesia.

GlobalWebIndex'€™s head of trends, Jason Mander, said on Tuesday that traditional social-networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ were becoming more passive, while mobile messaging was booming.

With many more people accessing the Internet on their phones and Internet connections getting better across the country, GlobalWebIndex estimated to see between 60 and 70 percent growth in the number of mobile-messaging applications in a year.

The number of smartphone users is forecast to surge to 103.6 million people in 2017 from around 61.2 million this year, according to market research company eMarketer.

GlobalWebIndex has estimated that around 62 percent of the country'€™s total Internet users would access the Internet via their mobile devices this year, up from 62 percent last year.

According to the GlobalWebIndex survey, which excluded BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) due to its shrinking number of users, WhatsApp has become Indonesia'€™s favorite mobile-messaging application, with 34 percent of the country'€™s Internet subscribers using the app.

Facebook Messenger, WeChat and Skype vied for shares of 28 percent, 18 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

In terms of growth, meanwhile, the survey found that WeChat, first launched in the country in September 2012, saw an 895-percent rise in its number of users this year compared to last year.

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Skype followed behind with user-growth rates of 133 percent, 112 percent and 108 percent, respectively.

Mander said that while tightening its grip in Indonesia, WeChat was doing well in India, Singapore and Malaysia.

'€œChina does account for more than 50 percent of [WeChat'€™s] user base, but WeChat is [also] growing very strongly in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region,'€ he said.

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