Only 11% of Indonesian Software Users Buy Real Microsoft Software
07 February 2013
On first blush, Microsoft’s 97% market share of Indonesia’s software market may seem like a good thing. But Andreas Diantoro, Microsoft Indonesia chief executive officer, says that while Microsoft may dominate market share, some 86% of the tablet, desktop, laptop and other electronic device users use pirated copies of the company’s software.
At the Intellectual Property Rights for a Better Indonesia seminar on November 7, 2012, Diantoro said that although “only 11% are original users,” there is little to prevent piracy.
A mere 550,000 computers contained genuine Microsoft software licenses out of the five million computers sold in in Indonesia in 2012, while 4.3 million use counterfeits, Diantoro said. The gap is even wider when comparing purchases in previous years.
“Indonesia has almost no legal culture of copyright protection, plus weak enforcement and general public indifference. The copyright situation is indeed dire,” Januar Jahja, managing partner at Januar Jahja & Partners in Jakarta, tells Asia IP.
Dennis Couto, Microsoft Indonesia general manager of anti-piracy and intellectual property, said that Indonesia ranks the 11th in terms of countries causing Microsoft to lose potential revenue because US$1.5 billion worth of legal software was not sold in 2011.
Compared to 2011, Microsoft’s net profits for the third quarter of 2012 fell 21%, down to US$4.5 billion. Revenue fell 8% to US$16 billion between July and September of 2012.
