Why is Indonesia so in love with the Blackberry?

Some of Indonesia's three million Blackberry owners use their smartphones to pass the time until they can break their Islamic Ramadan fast.

As the joke in Indonesia goes, if you don't have the right gadget you may end up a social outcast.
Undoubtedly, the gadget of the moment is the Blackberry smartphone.

A walk through a packed food court at lunchtime in Jakarta proves the point. Most patrons are glued to their smartphones, available in a myriad of colours but covered nonetheless in decorative cases.
Incessant message alerts reverberate around the food hall amid the clatter of cutlery.
Internet guru Onno Purbo believes Indonesian fans see the Blackberry as the trendier, flashier gadget.

Smartphone fever
But it is not just professionals like Purbo who are caught up in the hype. High school students like 14-year-old Haryo Suryo Susilo are also using them to stay in touch with their friends.
When Haryo meets us in a hotel lobby in Jogjakarta, he has been playing on his white smartphone for half an hour, ignoring the fruit platter in front of him.


"I've only had it three months and I love it," he says. His visibly annoyed mother, Sari Susilo, says he spends all his time on his new device.

Haryo's mother is a smartphone user herself and it is clear his love for his prize piece of technology runs in the family. His father even uses two smartphones to keep his supermarket business running and stay in touch with his family.

But why smartphones, rather than mobile phones? Because they're so much cooler, says Sari.
This kind of smartphone fever means Research In Motion, Blackberry's Canadian developers, needs hardly any advertising to lure in new customers or impress Indonesia's estimated three million existing users.
Despite this, there are high-profile marketing campaigns, most notably featuring the president's daughter-in-law.
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