BlackBerry In Indonesia: The Raising Storm

Kevin Michaluk of crackberry, raised an issue of the leaping numbers of BlackBerry users in Indonesia. Other source confirmed this by reporting that the growth reached 500% last year, and still growing.
It's no surprise for me, being an Indonesian and all, because in fact the BlackBerry's growth in Indonesian market is also the one reason behind my creating this blog.
Analyzing it a little, there are at least three major factors behind the not-just-steady-but-rapid-growth of BlackBerry Storm 9000, BlackBerry Curve 8900 and all of its variant in Indonesia, which mean the boost-up BlackBerry accesories sales as well. And Kevin, you might want to read this.
First is that RIM's BlackBerry has a great prestige among Indonesian. Forget about iPhone, BlackBerry is what YOU want if you are Indonesian. It still amazed me how the power of prestige can drive such frenzy. Indonesian BlackBerry users are not divided to social class nor their occupance. Here you can see politicians clumsily clutch their brand new BlackBerry Storm, soap-opera stars exchanging e-mail or simply text messages among each others with their BlackBerry Curve and grunge-looking college boys and chic college girls flashing around their shocking color-clad BlackBerry Bold.
The second is the fact that the available BlackBerry handsets are affordable since most of them come from black market. "80% of BlackBerry customers who use our service, didn't buy the handsets from us" said an Indosat spokeperson.
Indosat is one of official carriers for BlackBerry for Indonesia, the other are XL and Telkomsel. This can create a tight competition in the future, but right now the three carriers should be happy enough to survive only on their service and after-sales, since there no competiting the price of the black market BlackBerry handsets. The third factors, and the most ridiculous one I might add, maybe is the well-spread information that Barrack Obama uses BlackBerry. As we know, Mr. Obama used to live in Indonesia, and there's no asking about his popularity here during the Presidential Vote in US. Every Indonesian, who don't hold any grudge against US that is, wanted Obama to win and he did. If to once shared the same country with the President of USA is not enough for you, the next thing you could do is to have the same gadget.
How should RIM react to the amazing growth? Detiknet reported that the three vendors (Indosat, XL, Telkomsel) have already ask RIM, during the 2009 Wireless Enterprise Symposium, to either establish a representative office or providing after sale service center to anticipate the bloated BlackBerry market in Indonesia. FYI, RIM do not have any representative office in Indonesia.
So, what are you waiting for RIM? We talk about a huge market here. If you can't provide this gadget-craving people satisfying services, you might channel their big-spending-on-gadget tendency to other brand, and that will be the last "Storm" you wanted to exist.