About CHIP Indonesia

CHIP Indonesia

CHIP Indonesia was the Indonesian edition of CHIP, the German computer magazine first published in 1978. Published in Jakarta in the Indonesian language by PT Elex Media Komputindo, a company of the Kompas Gramedia group, under licence from the Vogel Burda Group of Munich, it was first issued in July 1997 and appeared monthly until December 2016, when Kompas Gramedia converted it to an online-only publication. For nineteen years it was one of Indonesia's principal computer magazines, known for laboratory-style hardware and software tests, practical workshops and the software discs bundled with its issues. Its editorial office stood at Jalan Palmerah Barat 33-37 in Jakarta, in the heart of the Kompas Gramedia publishing district, and its brand family included CHIP Foto-Video Digital and a stream of special editions.

Origins of the CHIP Brand in Germany

CHIP was launched in Germany in September 1978 and became one of the oldest and largest computer magazines in the country, published by CHIP Holding, formerly Vogel Burda Holding. Its German circulation averaged 418,019 copies a month in the fourth quarter of 2008, in a home market where its competitors included Computer Bild, PC World and c't. The brand was international from an early stage: Indonesian university research, drawing on the magazine's own history, records CHIP as published in sixteen countries across Europe and Asia, among them Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Singapore, Malaysia and India, where an edition titled Intelligent Computing CHIP ran from 1998 to 2013. The German brand also built one of Europe's strongest technology websites, CHIP Online, operated by CHIP Digital as an independent portal for hardware and software testing, price comparison, downloads and community, ranked among Germany's top thirty websites by traffic.

Launch in Indonesia in 1997

In Indonesia, CHIP was first published in July 1997 by PT Elex Media Komputindo, part of the Kompas Gramedia group, holding the licence from Vogel Burda Group of Munich, Germany. The timing placed its launch at the end of Indonesia's 1990s personal-computing boom and on the eve of the Asian financial crisis, yet the magazine endured and grew with the market it covered: the spread of home and office PCs, the arrival of the internet, digital photography, notebooks and smartphones. Elex Media, founded in 1985, was Kompas Gramedia's technology and popular-culture publisher, a pioneer of Indonesian computer books and, later, of manga publishing; within Elex, CHIP stood alongside the computer magazine Mikrodata and CHIP Foto Video Digital as the core of its technology list. The Indonesian edition was published in Bahasa Indonesia under licence from Vogel International, adapting the German title's test-driven formula for Indonesian buyers facing a fast-changing, import-dominated hardware market.

Editorial Formula: Tests, Reviews and Workshops

CHIP Indonesia described its own contents as the latest information from the computer industry, reviews of the digital photography and video world, results of hardware and software tests, and tips and tricks, together with an up-to-date picture of online services and guidance for readers entering cyberspace. Its named sections in its mature form included Aktual, the news section; Tes & Review, tests and reviews; Praktek & Workshop, practice and workshops; and Liputan, reports. The formula privileged measurement: products were examined and compared so that readers could buy with confidence, and practical instruction showed them how to use what they owned. A surviving special edition on networking shows the formula at full stretch, with a solutions section covering port forwarding for servers, remote control of PCs across a network, virtual private networks, logging in from anywhere and finding and fixing network problems, written as step-by-step guidance for home and small-office users.

The Bundled Disc Era

A signature of the Indonesian CHIP family was the disc bundled with the magazine. CHIP Foto-Video Digital, published in Indonesia from late 2004, included a CD with every edition, supported by a DVD-ROM, with a CD-ROM in its mini edition, carrying selected software, drivers, utilities and interactive content. In an era when Indonesian internet connections were slow and software downloads were measured in hours, a magazine that arrived with a disc of tested software was a distribution channel as much as a publication. The practice tied the print product to the reader's computer every month, and it made CHIP's special editions, devoted to subjects such as networking, into reference packages of text and software together.

Masthead and the Jakarta Operation

The imprint of the magazine's networking special edition preserves the structure of the Indonesian operation. The publisher was Teddy Surianto, the general manager Al. Adhi Mardhiyono, and the editor-in-chief W. Edi Taslim, with M. Reza Wahyudi Suwadji as managing editor and a team of editors and writers including Jimmy Auw, Ady W. Paudi, Aditya Hendra, Jati Putra, Kurniawan Ku and Irvan Nasrun. The editorial and advertising offices were at Jalan Palmerah Barat 33-37, Jakarta 10270, the magazine was printed by PT Gramedia, and its copyright lines ran jointly to CHIP, Vogel Burda Holding GmbH of Munich, and to PT Elex Media Komputindo, Kelompok Kompas Gramedia. Its contact addresses at chip.co.id anchored the Indonesian edition of the brand online as well as in print.

CHIP Foto-Video and the Brand Family

The Indonesian licence supported a small family of titles. CHIP Foto-Video Digital applied the parent formula to digital cameras and video, and its history, recounted in Indonesian academic work from its first edition of 2004, presents CHIP in Indonesia as a computer magazine that also reviewed the digital photography and video world. Alongside the monthly magazine, CHIP Indonesia produced special editions on single themes, of which the networking special is a documented example. Within Kompas Gramedia's magazine portfolio, references list CHIP and CHIP Foto Video among the group's licensed titles, next to National Geographic, Auto Bild, InStyle and Martha Stewart Living, evidence of how central licensed technology publishing was to the group's magazine strategy.

End of Print in 2016

In December 2016 Kompas Gramedia stopped the print editions of eight monthly magazines and tabloids, among them Kawanku, Sinyal, CHIP, CHIP Foto Video, What Hi-Fi?, Auto Expert, Car & Tuning Guide and Motor, transforming them into online publications, a decision reported by Tempo on 19 December 2016. Indonesian commentary on the print closures of the period likewise records that CHIP ended its print run and moved online, and a later national survey of closed print titles lists Majalah Chip among the casualties of 2015 to 2017. The date matches the German reference record of the Indonesian edition's span. The brand's centre of gravity had in any case been shifting to the web, where the German CHIP Online model of tests, downloads and price comparison could be reproduced without paper, printing or distribution costs.

Legacy

CHIP Indonesia's nineteen years, from July 1997 to December 2016, spanned almost the entire history of personal computing as a mass phenomenon in Indonesia. Published by Elex Media Komputindo under a Munich licence, it taught a generation of Indonesian users how to choose, configure, network and repair their machines, tested the products they were urged to buy, and delivered software to them physically in the years before broadband. Its survival through the Asian financial crisis, the dot-com collapse and the smartphone revolution, and its orderly conversion to online publication within Kompas Gramedia's digital network, make it one of the most durable licensed technology titles in Indonesian publishing history.