♥Senin, 24 Maret 2014
article
Mobile Phone
Operators Venture into E-Commerce
Mariel Grazella, The Jakarta Post,
Jakarta І Bussiness I Mon, March 24 2014, 12:02 PM
Mobile network operators are delving
into e-commerce to step up their non telecommunication income, which they want to see surge to
counterbalance the gradual decline in voice and text messages.
“Many telecommunication
operators have launched units like this because their core bussiness have been
slowing and as such, they are looking for new areas to invest in,” PT Indosat
group head of digital services, TauseefRiaz, said.
Indosat, the country’s
third-largest mobile network operator, has established a unit called Dunia
Digital, or Digital World, to play the role of tech incubator and accelerator. Establised at the end of last year, the unit
consolidates Indosat’s previously disjointed mobile payment and mobile
advertising businesses.
Riaz added that the
unit would soon be overlooking a new business: e-commerce.
“We are going to launched a new
e-commerce business and we plan to launch out first e-commerce products
within two months,” he told The Jakarta Post.
He added that Indosat
had eyed three e-commerce models, the two being investing in an e-commerce
start-up and collaborating with foreign players. “However, the one we will be lauching
soon is largely an in house project. This e-commerce model is more
retail-oriented but we
will focus on a few products,” he said.
Besides Indosat,
state-owned telecommunication operator PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom),
has collaborated with US-based eBay to establish PT Metra Plasa, which operates
e-commerce site, Plasa.com.
However, stricly
e-commerce sites falling in the top 25 most-visited sites in Indonesia
according to web information company Alexa are tokobagus.com and berniaga.com.
While Indosat is still working
to get their in house e-commerce business launched, PT XL Axiata has introduced
Elevenia, a virtual marketplace overseen by PT XL Planet.
XL Planet was formed as a joint venture between XL Axiata
and SK Planet, the online and mobile firm under South Korean telecommunication
operator SK Telecom.
XL Axiata chief digital
services officer Dian Siswarini said that XL Axiata and SK Planet evenly split
the almost US$40 million, two year investment in Elevenia.
“We have sourced our
share of the funding from our parent company Axiata Group Berhad. And to date,
we have invested approximately $1-2 million,” she pointed out.
Meanwhile, Indosat is
earmarking $2-3 million this year to run Dunia Digital.
Dian added that XL
Axiata had chosen to collaborate with SK Planet as Korea had become “the most
advanced market for e-commerce”.
“Although Elevenia has
been operating for only two weeks, we have amassed nearly 7,000 sellers
showcasing at least 65,000 products,” she pointed out.
“our daily visitor count is around 30,000, with an
additional 1,000 new visitors every day. However, the amount
actually shopping is still a low 3 percent,” she added.
Yet, she expected the number of
sellers to reach 50,000 and products to hit 1.5 million by the end of
November as the site caught on, she added.
“We have been scouting
vendors willing to open shop at Elevenia from those already running shops in
wholesale retail centers such as Tanah Abang and Mangga Dua,” she said.
She added that XL Axiata aimed to break even and earn profits
from its e-commerce business within five years.
“We expect our digital services
business, including value-added services [VAS], to contribute 8 percent
to our revenues by 2016, up from the current 3.5 percent in gross,” she said.
Simillar to Indosat, XL Axiata also operates a digital
mobile payment and advertising business. XL Axiata earned revenues of Rp
7.6 trillion in 2013, of which 57.2 percent came from mobile data and VAS.
Riaz pointed out that
having an e-commerce business would eventually leverage that of mobile payments
and advertising.
People could pay using
their mobile wallets while brands could advertise on the sites, he noted. In addition,
mobile network operators could leverage the massive amount of subscriber data
to tailor these services.
Ket:
Simple Present
Past Tense
Future Tense
Sumber: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/03/24/mobile-phone-operators-venture-e-commerce.html
written at♥09.18