A beginning

An epidemic called Pokemon-go is happening around the world, including Indonesia. Pokemon was happening around late 1990s. Movies, video games, and card games emerged around the world. After several years, it was dim around 2003. Pokemon-Go is an augmented reality game published by Niantic Labs. Augmented reality is a technology combining real world and computer images. The users can experience catching the pokemon as if they catch in the real world.

Many have said the future of technology is mobile, especially smart phones. With smart phones, people can do a lot of things such as ordering taxi (Uber), showing route to our destination (google maps), etc. Our daily life much depends on with mobile thus it cannot be separated with data usage. Based on CLSA research, mobile data traffic increased around 250% in the past 2 years from less than 1000 TB/day  in Q1 2014 to more than 2500 TB/day in Q4 2015. With many start-up companies emerge from the past 2 years, data consumption is just a beginning, leading to an opportunity for telecom companies.

Opportunity for Telecom companies

First, marketing opportunity. A big issue for telecom companies is to grab market share. As Pokemon-Go is happening right now, telecom companies can use this opportunity as a marketing strategy to increase or retain their market share. Pokemon-Go is just a beginning for augmented-reality-based games. Partnership with ‘Pokemon-Go’ alike game provider may be one of the strategies for telecom companies in grabbing market share of the competitors.

Second, data usage. From the CLSA research report, data usage significantly increased during the past 2 years and industry ARPU increased from around 19% per month from 2014 to 2015. As ‘Pokemon-Go’ alike games will emerge in the future, it will require a big data consumption leading to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) of the telecom companies.

Disadvantages

For sure, there is no such an easy way to grab the opportunity. High churn rate for Indonesian telecom companies is one of unsolved issue for years. Indonesians throw away their old sim card and buy the new sim card offering the cheaper package. Telecom companies offer a cheaper package to grab the market share, however, the customers buy a new sim card with a cheaper package.

Conclusion

Apart from some disadvantages, opportunities are widely open and likely continue to arise. More aggressive provider in taking the future opportunity of ‘Pokemon-Go’ alike games may result in leading the market. What a ‘Pokemon-Go’ alike games that will boom is a separate issue that needs to be addressed further.

Benny Januar Tannawi

Vice President, Mata Garuda Institute

18 July 2016