Yesterday's blog post on the official release of SmrtGuard jogged my memory on something I've been wanting to make mention of here on the blogs for a while... the explosive growth we're beginning to see of BlackBerry in Indonesia. If you listened to our WES 2009 Wrap Up Podcast, you'll remember one of the coolest things Bla1ze and I had a chance to attend at this year's WES was the signing ceremony between Indosat and SmrtGuard. After the business dealings were done, we had a great chat with the Indosat team members present and learned A LOT about the uptake of BlackBerry in the Indonesian market.

Compared to the total population of Indonesia, the total number of BlackBerry subscribers is still fairly small, though is growing at a big rate. Indosat made it pretty clear to us that BLACKBERRY is the smartphone brand that everybody wants (it's all about the always on, always connected lifestyle), but they need RIM to equip them with the tools to get at the HUGE middle piece of the market. Example - if there was a low-cost bare bones $100 BlackBerry (outright upfront purchase price) that customers could hook up with a low-cost / stripped down / BIS lite service, this would put the BlackBerry solution into the hands of millions. And we know what happens once you get a BlackBerry in your hands... you get addicted. From there more $$ would be spent by customers looking to add to the features of their plans.

There's a lot to get into here and discuss in a future article, but for now the video above does an awesome job of summing up the takeaways of that conversation, so be sure to watch.

[ Video via TDSResearch.com ]

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