Apple is hiring for a number of positions in Indonesia, suggesting that the Cupertino-headquartered company is accelerating plans to develop its retail and commercial presence in the Southeast Asian country.
Apple is looking for an HR manager, based on a job opening on Linkedin while its Singapore-based website features three 3 positions based in Indonesia, each will first be stationed in Singapore for an initial 3-6 month period.
These vacancies on Apple’s site include an iPhone channel manager, a CES (consumer electronic stores) manager, and a Jakarta-based account manager for iPhone/iPad carrier.
These positions appear to partially confirm rumours that we’ve heard that Apple is talking to operator Indosat about a potential app store billing partnership. The vacancies are very retail-focused, and speculation has been going on for some time that Apple’s global expansion will see it staff up in key Asia-Pacific markets.
Recently, Apple moved to provide more support for its growing base of Indonesian users by add a localised version of its latest iTunes release.
This move is also interesting considering the fact that Indonesia, as the one world’s biggest mobile market, but yet it has one of the lowest penetration rates for iOS devices. Based on a research by Effective Measure, the sum of Apple products are used by 10.06 percent of the population – that’s significantly lower than neighbours Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, and Malaysia, each of which are above 50 percent.
Another way to see this news, is that Apple may be looking at Indonesia as a potential growth market in which it partner with local carriers with the aim of gaining increased market share. The partnership with carriers in Indonesia is crucial for Apple, as they help structure the payment system for its premium products, which are essentially unaffordable for most Indonesian people.
Given that there are no Indonesian Apple Stores, it remains to be seen exactly what the company has planned for the country, which has a population in excess of 220 million people.
Indonesia is well known for being a BlackBerry strong hold and, in November last year, a crowd of more than 3,000 people queued to buy the company’s new BlackBerry 9790 handset
In other Apple-Indonesia related news, company co-founder Steve Wozniak is coming to Jakarta for a seminar on creativity and innovation. Those interested in more details should head here.
Image via Flickr / Andrew*
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