Indonesian Developers Shouldn't Be Afraid to Develop Paid Apps for iPhone

Us, Indonesian, by nature are freebies lovers - and pirated goods lovers too. Of course that applies only to some of us, but compared to other countries with higher GDP it is understandable why not many software are bought legally no matter how affordable the offers are. Even so, Distimo's publication on iPhone apps market in Asia, including Indonesia, shows surprising result. Indonesian users are considered to be the largest numbers who buy apps on iPhone.

According to Distimo's publication, out of 300 the most popular applications in each country which significantly has a very large number of downloads, there are 5.18% paid application in Indonesia market. The conversion is among 300 popular apps - where mostly are free apps- there are 15 paid apps listed. The average price is US$1.84, higher than most application bought in USA, US$1.48. 5.18% is the third highest number in Asia, under Japan and Sri Lanka. Even more shocking, that number is much higher than Singapore (3.24%) and Malaysia (2.53%).

Download volume in iOS platform (in this case, iPhone) is far from less. If rated, Indonesia is in second tier in download total volume, where US, China, Japan, Australia and a number of European countries are in the first tier. If we talk about the causing factor, I'd say that the fact that iPhone price is quite high in Indonesia (IDR 7-8 million) indicates that iPhone users can afford it and willing to spend their money to but apps in App Store. Of course we can't act blind on jailbreak phenomenon that accommodates downloading (almost every) application for free, but the fact Distimo revealed cannot be underestimated. Indonesian still like to buy application in App Store, and definitely not a small number at that.

For local developers, this research result shows opportunity. In Asia, based on the survey, the most popular paid app categories are games, entertainment, photography, 50% paid apps is taken by games category. Even though data showed that local contents (free or paid) are still less than 20% popular apps surveyed, I know that several local game developers is starting to get a good grip of the competition and I'm sure if they can create games that market like, huge market is just around the corner, not only for Indonesian market but also for regional and global market. AFAIK, Movreak - a movie application that shows movie and theater schedules - sold well for $0.99.

From the report, we discover that Indonesian users are not against in-app purchase method. We'll talk about this in another article. So, Indonesian developers have nothing to be afraid of in developing paid apps for local or global market in iOS platform because is has good (and in the future will be very very good and huge) potential.