Mary Meeker’s annual State of the Internet Report looks at the trends driving the online economy. One area that should be of concern is that Australian entrepreneurs are overlooking one of the world’s biggest growth markets that is sitting right on the nation’s doorstep.
Early in Mary’s overview, on slides 5 and 7, she shows the growth of various markets. Indonesia is the second biggest growth market for internet users – 58% year on year to 55 million – and eighth in the world for smartphone growth with a 36% increase last year taking total users to 27 million.
Given the penetration of both smartphones and the internet are low with only one quarter of Indonesians connected to the internet and less than one mobile phone in ten currently being a smartphone, there is massive potential for the savvy entrepreneur.
While there’s a steady stream of stream of Australian app developers and entrepreneurs heading to Silicon Valley, London and a few to Singapore there’s very few looking to their biggest neighbour.
This ignoring of Indonesia is one of the many omissions in the Australia in the Asian Century report; despite being one of Australia’s closest neighbours with the world’s fourth largest population and an economy growing at over 6% per year, both businesses and governments tend to overlook the nation.
For Australia, the tragedy is that Indonesia has a lot offer businesses that do more than just dig up coal and iron ore.
Perhaps now the mining boom is over, entrepreneurs and governments might start to take markets like Indonesia, and other South East Asian countries more seriously. It’s an omission that’s currently costing the country dearly.
Indo to most Aussies just means Bali. You’da thought a nation of 230 million souls sitting an hour’s flight outside Darwin might get our attention, but apparently not. And in a way it’s a neat metaphor for what’s wrong with our current government. Outside mining I contend there isn’t really a coherent plan at all. The Asian Century is a nice slogan, but I’m unclear on how government (or most big business for that matter) sees things unfolding. Does AusTrade still exist btw?