New Car Sales Drop Leaves Audio Entrepreneurs Disappointed

KatadataOTO – New car sales in the country have not been exciting. Continually facing challenges from time to time.

According to data from the Association of Indonesian Automotive Industries (Gaikindo), new car shipments from factory to dealer (wholesales) in May 2025 amounted to 60,613 units.

This number plummeted by 15.1 percent compared to last year. Because in May 2024, it was able to reach 71,391 units.

In addition, retail sales of new cars in May 2025 were not much different, only reaching 61,339 units.

Photo : KatadataOTO

Also a 15.1 percent decrease compared to May 2024, which managed to record 72,246 four-wheeled vehicles.

Various causes are touted for the lack of improvement in new car sales. Starting from the weakening of public purchasing power.

Unstable economic conditions also contribute to the sluggish market for new four-wheeled vehicles.

This condition has had many impacts. One of them is felt by car audio entrepreneurs.

“Consumers in the upper and lower classes are somewhat affected or have decreased,” said Andreas Tjahjadi, CEO of Audio Plus Indonesia in West Jakarta some time ago.

Andreas further said that lower-class consumers are those who modify their audio with a budget of IDR 8 million to IDR 10 million.

Now, for that segment, Andreas feels that this year has seen a significant decline compared to 2024.

“I don't have the exact data, but when compared to last year's sales, our products in that price class have relatively decreased,” he continued.

Meanwhile, in the upper class, or for consumers who spend hundreds of millions to billions on audio, the situation is no less sluggish.

“We have to admit that the high-end market is not doing so well in 2025. The decline is quite drastic now,” Andreas affirmed.

Nevertheless, Andreas stated that for consumers in the middle class, the market is actually stable and even tends to grow slightly.

Photo : Cartens Audio

He explained that this situation is very different from consumers in the lower and upper segments.

“The middle class is growing a bit. They are usually the ones who install audio in a car for IDR 40 million to IDR 80 million,” he concluded.

Andreas also hopes that sales of new cars and audio can improve again, allowing the market to recover from the downturn.