Motorola ties up with Indonesian beeper firm
Motorola ties up with Indonesian beeper firm
JAKARTA (JP): The United States-based telecommunications and electronics giant Motorola reached a deal yesterday with PT Duta Pertiwi Santosa, a private firm operating the Starpage beeper service, to set up a joint radio paging venture.
The two companies signed the agreement to establish PT Dutasejahtera Komunikatama with an investment of US$10 million and plans to take over the beeper service operated by Duta Pertiwi Santosa.
Duta Pertiwi's director and commissioner, Karna Brata Lesmana, said that the new company is 70 percent by Duta Pertiwi and 30 percent by Motorola, which paid $3 million for the shares.
"Through this partnership we promise to provide better service to cope with the increasingly competitive radio paging business."
Duta Pertiwi is 10 percent owned by the Indonesian Foundation of Technology Education, 70 percent by Karna and 20 percent by a company executive, Rachmat Sumengkar. Established in 1986, the company currently has total assets of $10 million and 70,000 subscribers.
Karna said that with Motorola as a partner, he hoped to net 100,000 subscribers with an annual growth rate of 40 percent.
Motorola, with revenues of more than $27 billion, is one of the world's leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers running a number of plants in Asia.
"There are currently more than 80 radio paging providers in Indonesia. Out of the country's nearly 200 million population, there are currently only 450,000 beeper users," Karna said, adding that the market is still wide open.
In addition to Duta Pertiwi, at least five radio paging providers are partly owned by overseas parties. PT Telematrixindo with the EasyCall brand is partly owned by an Australian-Hong Kong firm; PT SkyTelindo with Skytel is partly owned by Singaporean and U.S. telecommunications firms; PT Indolink First Pacific with Indolink, which is partly owned by a Dutch firm; and PT Buana Bintangbayu whose Telepage is partly owned by a Japanese company.
The government hopes to reach three million beeper subscribers by the end of the ongoing Sixth Five-Year Development Plan period, which ends in March 1998. Ninety new licenses will be extended by the government to qualified firms based outside of Jakarta to operate local paging services.
The government is also encouraging investors to set up assembly plants for radio paging equipment in the country.
Karna said that the new company will only operate a radio paging service and not enter the beeper manufacturing business.
The president of PT Motorola Indonesia, the marketing arm of Motorola in the country, Larry Ohlrogge, said that: "We're looking for the possibility in the future to do production in Indonesia but we are waiting for the right opportunity, depending on the international market."
Motorola has three factories in Malaysia producing semiconductors and trunked radios, as well as radio paging factories in Singapore, China and India, he said.
The company has just opened a $99 million semiconductor plant in Carmona, the Philippines, whose products are used for such wireless telecommunications equipment as beepers, cellular telephones and portable two-way radios.
Motorola's vice president for the Asia-Pacific, Edmund J. Reilly, said that his company controlled a 60 percent share of the Indonesian radio paging market and more than 60 percent worldwide. (icn)