The online world has no boundaries and can be accessed internationally with an internet connection, the potential of doing business online to the world is big.

However, it is sometimes difficult for new companies to target and market their businesses to everyone online since the internet limitless, company websites can get lost in the world wide web.

Furthermore, local businesses may not be ready to do business internationally. Hence, it is wiser to segment down the internet world into countries, then target and market to these segments.

Here, we want to highlight the potential of marketing to the internet users in Indonesia. The first thing we should look at is the statistics of Internet usage of the world and funnel down to the internet usage and penetration in Indonesia.

Looking at the internet usage of the world by geographic location by Miniwatts Marketing Group. Asia is leading other geographic countries in internet usage. Asia, with the largest population of the world of 3,776,181,949 compared to rest of the world population of 2,899,938,339. Its no wonder Asia has the largest internet users compared to other countries of the world.

When look deeper into Asia and see the Top 10 countries with the highest internet usage in Asia and you will be surprised!

Indonesia is ranked No.5 of Asia’s leading internet usage country with over 25 million users in Indonesia (2008). See Internet Users Indonesia. Compared to other more developed Asian countries, it’s a surprising lead.

This lead is mostly due to the huge population of Indonesia. With over 237,512,355 in population, it is the third largest country in Asia based on its population after China and India with a population of 1,330,044,605 and 1,147,995,898 respectively. The forth largest country based on population after Indonesia is Pakistan at 167,762,040.

So as you can see, Indonesia should, soon climb to the number 3 spot of the largest internet usage in Asia.  A 5 million increase in one year over 2007-2008 and a 10.5% penetration.

It has been reported that the government of Indonesia is targeting 50 million users by 2009 which by no means a challenging task to increase internet usage by two fold or a 20% penetration (with 20% of the population using the internet).

Having said that, China has 19% of its population use the internet. Neighboring countries like Singapore has 58.6% and Malaysia has 59% of its population use the internet, not to mention Japan has the highest percentage of internet users achieving more than 73.8% penetration. Hence with the right support in infrastructure and commitment from the authorities, Indonesia should be able to achieve its target.

Indonesia Mobile Phone Subscribers

The authorities of Indonesia is however very confident that a 20% penetration should be easily achievable in 2-3 years especially when Indonesia has over 80 million in mobile phone users, a 34% penetration in its total population which is expected to increase to 120 million by 2010 according to SMS marketing services Indonesia. With the support mobile phone technology and trend towards mobile internet, plus the increase installation of wifi hotspots throughout Indonesia. Indonesia internet usage future looks promising.