Total mobile subscribers in Indonesia crossed the 90 million mark by early 2008, with 37% penetration and is expected to hit 120 million subscribers by end of this year. Indonesia’s mobile market is growing rapidly with almost 50% annual increase in subscribers over the past 7 years.

The third most populous country in Asia, Indonesian subscriber growth rates is forecasted to average about 9.3% per year from 2008-2010. PT Telkom, 65% controlled by PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia and 35% owned by Singapore Telecommunications, is the largest mobile company in Indonesia with more than 50% market share.

Quick Facts For Indonesia (Source: BuddeComm)

• Population – 245.0 million
• GDP at Current prices: US$488 billion
• GDP per capita: US$2,000
• GDP real growth rate: 6%
• Mobile Penetration: 37%
• Broadband penetration: 0.1%

Indonesia’s second-largest cellular operator, PT Indosat, added 7.9 million new mobile sign-ups for first half 2008. The company’s total subscriber base rose 32% to 32.4 million subscribers by end June, up from 24.5 million at the end of 2007.

PT Exelcom, 83.8% owned by Telekom Malaysia and Indonesia’s third-largest mobile carrier, announced that its total subscriber base had jumped 82% year-on-year to hit 18.4 million subscribers as of end March, doubling the company’s net profit for first quarter 2008 to US$39.84 million.

The number of Internet users in Indonesia was estimated at more than 25 million by early 2008, accounting for a relatively low penetration of 10%.

According to AdMob, a mobile advertising network that claims to serve more than 3.5 billion ads in June 2008, Indonesia has now become their second largest market, ahead of India and the U.K. that had 352 and 228 million ad requests respectively.

Indonesian traffic more than doubled in June 2008 to 472 million requests (primarily driven by new publishers), based on the Mobile Metrics Report that tracks AdMob’s 437 fixed publisher sites over a period of 12 months.

Source: Mobile Metrics June 2008, AdMob