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Economy in brief: Indosat, Bookmate offer e-book service
Publicly listed telecommunications company PT Indosat has teamed up with Russia-based electronic book firm Bookmate to offer digital books to Indosatâs customers
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ublicly listed telecommunications company PT Indosat has teamed up with Russia-based electronic book firm Bookmate to offer digital books to Indosat's customers.
Indosat CEO Alexander Rusli said Indonesians read more through their phones nowadays as smartphones had become popular in society.
He said Indonesians were actually willing to pay for what they read but most of them found it hard to pay for reading services as online payment gateways were not common in the country.
'We will use cellular balance for payment to make it [the transaction] easier,' Alexander told reporters on Monday during the launch of the service, which is called Cipikabookmate.
Cipikabookmate is now available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
Alexander said that customers would be charged per month on a subscription basis rather than for every book they read. Indosat currently offers rates of Rp 39,000 (US$2.77) for regular subscription and Rp 59,000 for premium.
Bookmate currently has a total of 500,000 titles in its collection, including 4,000 titles in Indonesian. ' JP/saf
