ASIA : Siemens mobile, the mobile communication group at Siemens AG, intends to utilize a product offensive to win further market share in the Indonesian mobile phone market.

With a population of 220 million inhabitants, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-largest country and one of the strategic growth markets in Asia for the company, as announced today by Lothar Pauly, member of the Group Board of Siemens mobile, at a press conference in Jakarta.

In the network sector the company is already collaborating successfully with the three mobile operators Telkomsel, Indosat and Excelcom. With a market share of nearly 40 percent in mobile networks, Siemens mobile is the clear number one.

The product offensive comprises the new models C65, CX65, M65 and S65, which cover the entire spectrum from an entry-level handset right through to a sophisticated, high-end mobile phone featuring a 1.3-megapixel camera. Siemens mobile wants to get the mobile phone customers in the booming Indonesian market interested in its new products and significantly increase its market share of currently 9 percent. The number of Indonesian mobile phone users increased by 60 percent last year and today totals more than 20 million subscribers; some nine percent of the country’s population owns a mobile phone. And according to market estimates, this number is expected to rise to 60 million by 2008. Expanding their networks poses particular challenges to mobile operators: In regions with low average revenue per user, the costs of building a network are high, while the anticipated revenues are low. Siemens is therefore offering its “SmartInspire” end-to-end-solution especially for these kinds of mobile communication markets. The solution’s compact equipment package and flexible network utilization options enable network operators to cost-effectively serve even smaller, lower-revenue regions. This is a prerequisite for being able to profitably tap into growth markets.

Since Indonesia is predominantly a market with only relatively low sales per customer, charging models are additionally required that offer flexible rates, bonus programs and verification of the customer’s current prepaid or postpaid credit balance. In response to this need, Siemens mobile has developed the particularly customer-friendly “Convergent Online Charging” system that is currently integrated in the Telkomsel network. “Our major accounts from Europe are now contacting Telkomsel to learn more about the operator’s experience with this system. Indonesia is clearly playing a pioneering role here,” noted Lothar Pauly.

Indonesia, with an archipelago of 13,500 islands is also an interesting market for wireless modules and therefore a focal emphasis for Siemens mobile. Siemens has supplied the Indonesian State Electricity with 2,000 of these modules. They are being used to read electric meters at both large corporations as well as small and medium enterprises and send the readings to the State Electricity’s headquarters via SMS. This enables the utility avoid enormous travel expenses for its meter readers.

Thanks to its leading role as a full-line supplier, Siemens mobile sees itself outstandingly positioned in Indonesia to benefit from the future of mobile communication – of the 22 UMTS/3G networks that are in commercial operation throughout the world today, 12 are from Siemens and its partner NEC. UMTS/3G will launch in Indonesia this year in test networks. Moreover, various data services that Siemens has supplied to Indosat as end-to-end solutions, such as location-based services, are already being used to test how these kinds of services are being received by the Indonesian mobile communication customers.

In any event, daily life in Indonesia would be inconceivable today without mobile phones: One out of every two Indonesian mobile users organizes their leisure time exclusively via mobile phone, as Siemens mobile found from a survey on the use of mobile phones in everyday life in Indonesia.