During BlackBerry Live, CEO Thorsten Heins announced the availability of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for iOS and Android this coming summer. To use the free BBM service will require iOS 6 or Android 4.0. Aside from being multi platform, BlackBerry will also introduce BBM Channels which acts as special channels for brands and celebrities to interact with their fans.
Echelon Satellite from Indonesia to Japan have been completed and now it’s time for the main event to start. Echelon 2013, an Asia’s prominent technology event, will be kicking off on June 4-5 at Singapore Expo Max Atria, Singapore. There will be two big things expected to be experienced by all attendees, technology conference and startup pitches. One of keynote speaker is Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups from Silicon Valley.
8villages is one of the growing startups in Indonesia and set its sights at a market that many startups don’t pay attention to. Farmers with feature phones may be a combination considered to be uncool by local startups which tend to refer to Silicon Valley where practically everyone there uses a smartphone. Indonesia is clearly a different market, similar to many growing Asian nations as feature phones are still dominant. Just because it’s a feature phone market doesn’t mean it can’t be monetized. mig33 with its business model shows that this is possible.
Recently Rakuten, as one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, conducted a survey involving 5000 respondents in 12 countries around the world, including Indonesia. Facilitated by Survey Sampling International, the survey showed that Indonesian consumers spend $239 (Rp 2.3 million) on average in 2012 to shop online. While the figure may seem large, it’s actually the smallest among the surveyed countries.
While there are several online restaurant review service in town, it’s not that easy to find startup that able to go deeper and offer online reservation service. Meet LivEpicly. Serves like the Indonesia’s OpenTable, LivEpicly helps customers reserving their seat in their favorite restaurant. With investment from INCYTE (Systec Group), LivEpicly is currently available in Jakarta and will expand its list in Bandung this month.
Nikkei Business Publications (Nikkei BP) organizes IT and Gaming companies matchmaking in Jakarta, which will be held on May 16 at Gran Melia Hotel – Kuningan. The event will be started at 10 AM until 7.30 PM, where the attendants shall join Conference, Business Meeting/Exhibition and Networking Party. The focus is to bridge better interaction between Indonesian and Japanese business people in this area, especially in smartphone industry.
