iPhone Messaging
No matter what kind of phone they have, Indonesians in general want two things from their phones (aside from being able to make calls and send sms): Yahoo Messenger and forwarding SMS*. Yahoo's messaging network is so prevalent in this country it's almost unthinkable that anyone would drop their YM account**.
I also just discovered tonight at id-iPhone's gathering that many business people still have partners and clients that don't do email but they know sms. Forwarded SMS usually means a joke, spam, or some other type of junk, just like with email, but it struck me tonight that there might just be a significant portion of the market that actually use sms as business tools. Not just forwarding contacts but sending payment details, account numbers, product lists, and plenty of other commerce activities. I suppose I should have realized this earlier seeing that smart phones, while prevalent, are used mostly by people who don't even know how to use emails. Many are close to being tech illiterates. The lack of proper support for messaging system in the iPhone highlights one of the reasons why people jailbreak their iPhones here. They want to be able to chat continuously just like with Blackberries, receiving updates as they arrive, not when they open the application, and being able to forward text messages. I can tell you that the majority, perhaps 95% of id-iPhone members, jailbreak their iPhones and will talk others into jailbreaking them. Many of the members also said cut, copy, and paste wold be nice too but not as crucial as messaging. Not too many people complain about lack of physical keyboards though. In other words, iPhone OS 3.0 should solve most of their problems.*) I don't do SMS much. I tend to ignore SMS that come in unless it is an urgent matter
**) I don't do chat either. GTalk and Skype occasionally but that's it.
