TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Google Asia Pacific's chief marketing officer Simon Kahn said that 67 percent of smartphone owners in Indonesia shop directly using their mobile phones.

This high percentage serves as a golden opportunity for e-commerce businesses and SMEs in Indonesia to enhance their operations and book higher profits.

Madelaine Ong, VP Marketing of marketplace platform elevania.com, said there are about 55.2 million SMEs in Indonesia. But unfortunately, only 0.05 percent had tapped the online market.

This shows that the high use of Internet in Indonesia is not followed by a business model migrate to digital by SMEs, which is unfortunate considering the sector has an opportunity to increase sales from the online market.

Fortunately, the government is taking measures to create a clear business guideline for the e-commerce sector in a bid to boost its growth. The first step is by creating a roadmap, currently being drafted by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology together with the Indonesian E-Commerce Association (idEA) and relevant stakeholders.

Some time ago, Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara said the roadmap materialize into a regulatory structure that supports e-commerce business in Indonesia.

Rudiantara said the roadmap will divide e-commerce businesses into three segments: startups, SMEs, and well-established e-commerce businesses. Similarly, the Trade Ministry is currently formulating a Government Regulation (RPP) Draft on E-Commerce.

A recent data release by Google showed that smartphone penetration in Indonesia has increased from 28 percent in 2014 year to 43 percent this year.

As the world's fourth most populous country, this statistically presents a good market for the smartphone companies, over-the-top (OTT) service providers, and mobile data providers.

Veronica Utami, marketing chief at Google Indonesia, recently said that Indonesia is one of the world's top 21 countries with more smartphone users than computer users.

"About 30 percent of smartphone owners browse the internet using their device at least once a week," she said.

BISNIS.COM | RR