Smartfren partners with Viki to bring video access to 9.4M subscribers

Indonesian CDMA mobile operator Smartfren has revealed its partnership with international video portal Viki as part of their commitment to bring innovative value-added service (VAS) to their customer base of 9.4 million subscribers.

Besides Viki, Smartfren has also announced a tie-up with another company, VMS, to offer video messaging services to its users. In a press conference last week, the mobile company also threw in vouchers for online games and discount coupons valid at select merchants. Viki provides video-type content, such as animation, film, movie, TV series, and video clips, which also include subtitles in more than 150 languages — a service that hinges on its network of one million translators.

It features 10,000 hours of content, and has seen 8.5 million unique visitors with 36 million total visits per month. Netizens all over the world will be able to enjoy box office hits, Korean romantic drama series, concert performances, music videos, interview clips and K-Pop video clips, among others.

Through this partnership, Viki is now one of the pre-installed apps in Smartfren’s Android-based tablet and smartphone offerings. Not only that, Smartfren subscribers are entitled to enjoy Viki videos ahead of users from other operators, and they even get to view at faster rates, with the recommended 3.1 Mbps data plan.

Smartfren New VAS Press Conference – Q&A Session

This is actually Viki’s second alliance with Indonesia mobile operator after teaming-up with AXIS (PT. AXIS Telekom Indonesia) in late September. Explaining why Korean videos dominate the platform despite of its popularity across Asia and the rest of the world, Partnerships and Marketing Manager for Indonesia Dellawati Wijaya says that this is mostly due to founder JiWon Moon being Korean. Also, one of their strategic investors is SK Planet, a subsidiary of South Korea’s SK Telecom. Earlier this year they have inked a deal with music companies Warner and LOEN Entertainment, to feature video performances of Korean artists such as Brown Eyed Girls and Drunken Tiger.

Quite similar with Viki, free video broadcast service VMS is also available pre-installed in Smartfren’s Android mobile devices. It provides premium content ranging from news, entertainment, celebrity, religious, to comedy. Users are allowed to share high quality videos up to five minutes in length, create their own channel, upload the video they’ve created and share it with other members. Meanwhile, businesses can use this platform for mobile sales and marketing purposes, so they will be able to sell, promote, advertise, and survey through pull mobile database, push mass video and interactivity along with an analytics tool to determine the effectiveness of their campaigns.

The online game junkies no longer need to buy their game credits, since they are now able to purchase it through top-up vouchers sold in 100,000 outlets across Indonesia. To date, the voucher is valid for 22 online games, while throughout the year the list is expected to hit 30. The mobile coupon service will allow subscribers get certain discounts from several merchants simply by sending SMS or scanning a QR Code, and then showing the particular SMS with coupon code inside. At the launch event, Herman Suharto, Smartfren’s m-commerce business development division head, admitted that VAS only contributes around 4% of their total revenue. However, the addition of new VAS is not primarily meant for revenue generation, but more as a move to build customer loyalty.