Chinese smart phone manufacturers make headways in Vietnam

Mi Store - Xiaomi's official online shopping website in Vietnam

With the price of VND5-10 million ($220-440) as well as eye-catching marketing strategies, Chinese smartphones have quickly gained foothold in the Vietnamese market by targeting young people who want to experience new technologies, take photos, and surf social networks—and are on a budget.

After entering Vietnam over one year ago, Xiaomi’s strategy of flogging phones at reasonable prices has paid off as it now occupies the same market share as Apple.

ictnews.vn quoted Michelle Xu, director of China-based mobile brand Coolpad, as saying that a firm needs to sell about 30,000 smart phones a month to break into the top five, and 50,000 to get into the top three.

Lei June, CEO of Xiaomi, assessed that Vietnam’s development potential remains huge because nearly half of the company’s target customers are using mobile phones with basic features. “We will open a new competition by offering premium configurations at reasonable prices,” June added.

According to Tony Phung, an expert in assessing technology products, Chinese smartphones are popular because their reasonable prices fit the wallets of the majority of Vietnamese consumers.

Chinese mobile brands offer good smart phones for VND5-8 million ($220-352), while Apple completely ignores the segment and Samsung has not been paying it enough love either.

Two years ago, in May 2016, the third and fourth ranks were held by domestic Mobiistar (5.8 per cent) and Microsoft (4.7 per cent), while the runners-up were Sony (4.6 per cent), and Taiwan-based HTC and Asus 2 per cent each. However, by now all of these brands have been replaced by Chinese mobile manufacturers, and some brands like Sony and Microsoft even withdrew from Vietnam.

Lately, China-based Huawei, the world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer that sold 153 million mobile phones in 2017, also announced plans to become the second best selling mobile phone brand in Vietnam in 2020.

Huawei will also focus on the mid-end segment, promoting its main product Huawei Nova 3E.

“68 per cent of Vietnamese technology users are young people who want to experience new technologies as reasonable prices,” said Herry Liu, director of Huawei Vietnam’s Business and Consumer Department.