Smartphone penetration as share of mobile phone users in Indonesia 2014

The forecast estimated that about 47.6 percent of the mobile phone users were going to have a smartphone in 2019. As smartphones became the standard in 2019, the penetration rate compared to the population says more about the interest of the Indonesian population in smartphones. In 2019, the penetration rate of smartphones in Indonesia reached almost 64 percent.

Smartphone usage in Indonesia

In 2014, an estimated 33 percent of mobile phone users in Indonesia owned a smartphone and this figure was projected to almost double to 48 percent by 2019. The number of mobile phone users in the country stood at around 123 million in 2013 and was expected to rise to over 193 million people by 2019. This would have meant that a projected 92 million people in Indonesia owned a smartphone in 2019. Recent data shows that the actual number of smartphone users already reached over 170 million in Indonesia.

Android was on the rise

As of December 2014, the most popular mobile operating system in Indonesia was Android, with the Google-backed OS holding a market share of just under 60 percent. Its closest competitor was Series 40, used in Nokia phones, which held a share of around 10 percent. Although Apple’s iOS was the second most popular smartphone operating system worldwide, it held just a 3.85 percent share of the Indonesian mobile market at the end of 2014.

Chatting was one of the most popular activities on the mobile internet

An increasing number of people in Indonesia are using their mobile phones to access the internet. In 2015, mobile phone internet user penetration in the country was at 33.85 percent and this is expected to more than double to 86.79 percent by 2025. As of 2014, some of the most popular online services amongst mobile internet users in Indonesia were Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). BBM was the preferred mobile messenger app of smartphone users in the country in 2014, with 76 percent of users stating that they used the service to message friends.