Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

By Digital News Asia May 29, 2017

Forty-five percent favour data saving features over other features
Ninety percent of users opt for third-party browsers for their convenience

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

A SURVEY conducted in the six biggest cities in Indonesia revealed that nearly half of respondents are not satisfied with their default browsers because of slow browsing speed, high data consumption and frequent crashes.

The Mobile Browser Satisfactory Index Survey was conducted in Bandung, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Medan and Makassar by Opera, a developer a mobile browser, to find out more about the browsing habits of Indonesia’s smartphone users and how they use the internet on their devices.

The survey of young respondents (18-25 years old) found that only 10% of respondents use the default browsers on their smartphones, meaning 90% of users are opting for third-party browsers for their convenience.

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

“The main reason why respondents are using other mobile browsers is because they prefer a browser which gives them ease of use and access to the internet. This is quite important for them to choose a good browser because we found that about two-thirds of mobile internet users in Indonesia use their smartphone browsers more than eight times a day,” said Opera Software Asia growth director Ivollex Hodiny.

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

The findings confirmed the results of the We Are Social survey conducted in 2017, which found that Indonesian internet users spend nearly four hours per day browsing the internet on their smartphone mobile browsers. Indonesia is one of the top 10 countries that spend the most time online.

Using smartphone browsers for searches, news and social media

Hodiny pointed out that Indonesian smartphone users mostly use internet browsers to search for information, read news and access social media.

Lifestyle (57%), health (52%) and education (50%) are three of the most popular types of information that respondents look for when using their smartphone browsers.

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

“However, if we go into detail over the respondents’ feedback, we will find out that male and female respondents actually have different interests in terms of the kind of information they seek. Our male respondents are interested in information related to sports, technology and health, while our female respondents seek information on lifestyle, health and entertainment/gossip,” said Hodiny.

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

He also stated that, according to the survey result, Indonesian males have a tendency to use mobile browser more than females.

“Indonesian smartphone users love to use their mobile browser, and more than half of them are using it no less than eight times a day. The number of male users outnumber female users who browse eight times per day 71% to 59%, respectively.”

Most favoured browser feature: data saving

The survey results also showed that nearly half of Indonesian smartphone browser users (45%) favour data saving features over other features.

Most Indonesian smartphone users dissatisfied with default browsers

“The survey results further showed that male respondents use this feature more often than female respondents, although both consider data saving to be more important than other features such as offline mode, night mode or news feed,” said Ivollex

Forty-two percent of male respondents and 33% of female respondents say that they favour data saving over other features.

Ivollex said that Opera is aware of Indonesian mobile browser users’ need for data saving features.

“We regularly enhance the capability of our data saving feature on the Opera browser, such as Opera Mini’s unique compression technology that has been extended to the saved page feature so that the size of a page you save will shrink to as small as 10% of the original size. It provides you with the essential content by excluding the unwanted frills.”

He also said that besides the compression technology Opera Mini offers, the browser recently implemented a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) engine for smartphone users in Indonesia that will ensure content discovery is at the heart of the browser. Users will get fully personalised and localised content delivered to them.

As of now, the company is working with 45 top-tier publishers covering close to 100 websites that are often read by Indonesians. The content categories cover a very broad range of user interests including news, entertainment/gossip, lifestyle, sports, health and technology from major publishers.