The New Indonesia Smartphone Regulation 2019

Indonesian government has officially issued regulations that enable the authorities to restricted smartphones purchased on the black market or bought from overseas. This new campaign is an effort to support the growth of smartphone market in Indonesia and enable healthier competition to the legal, official smartphone vendors in the business.

As of 2019, Indonesia is one of the largest market for smartphone products. The country managed to have 60 million units sold annually.


According to Airlangga Hartarto, Indonesia’s Industry Minister, with the policy, investors will continue to enter Indonesia because their industries are protected from the risks of the black market. While the most illegal phones are coming from the brand such as Xiaomi, Apple, Samsung, Sony and OnePlus and most of them are illegally come from China, Malaysia or Singapore.



As of September 2019, according to data from Statcounter, the biggest phone manufacturers in Indonesia market are Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Mobicel, Apple and Asus.



Currently, Indonesia is estimated to lose 2 trillion rupiah (around 141 million USD) per year from the potential value added tax from illegally imported smartphone, since the government doesn’t charge import duties on this products.


Baca juga: 

Before the new regulations applied, which will be enforced by April 2020, smartphone users are encouraged to check whether their device is a legal or illegal products on a website established by the government. They can input their IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) number and see whether the IMEI is registered on the system or not.

The official website for checking the status of IMEI number is here: https://imei.kemenperin.go.id.

All of the official phone manufacturers that playing officially in Indonesian market already provide their IMEI numbers to the government. So if the users’ device was not registered, then it is most probably an illegally imported device.

Within these six months, users that already used illegally imported device can still register their IMEI numer. But after the new regulation was started, there’s no way to do that. Illegally imported phone will be banned and will not compatible with any of the telecommunication operators in the country.


For Indonesian that travels abroad and bought new smartphones overseas, they still can do that but maximum for 2 units only. They also have to pay the value added taxes. The tax payment receipt can be used to register the phone IMEI for their newly bought phones. If they didn’t register, they will not able to use the phone after six months period.

This new regulation will bring benefits to 34 local and international phone assembling company such as Sat Nusapersada and Pegatron. With the illegal phone will be blocked, they can increase their manufacturing capacity to fulfill the market’s demand.
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