Following the unexpected success story of ABTel with its Q-Mobile brand, many other enterprises have jumped on the bandwagon and are trying to develop Vietnamese mobile phones.

From mobile phone distributors to brand developers

In recent years, Vietnamese mobile phone users have got used to 100 percent Vietnamese brands, such as Q-Mobile of ABTel, F-Mobile of FPT, Mobistar of P&T, Avio of VinaPhone, or Zik 3G of Viettel. Vu Huy Hoang Company owns three Vietnamese brands, namely Mobell, Cayon an K-Touch.

The success of the Vietnamese brands has prompted more enterprises to make investment to develop Vietnamese mobile phones. In 2010 alone, the market witnessed four new suppliers, HiPT with Hi-Mobile products, CMC with Bluefone, Hanel with Hanel products and Digiworld has joined forces with the initial investors P&T to make Mobistar phones.

Thuan Phat Group has announced the investment in a $70 million factory which makes electronic circuit boards. Meanwhile, P-Phone brand products of Thuan Phat hit the market in mid 2010. It is still too early to comment about the success of the investment, but the move by the big group shows its commitment to investing in the domestic market. This is considered an important move by Thuan Phat to turn from a distributor of well-known products like Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericssons to a brand developer.

Some years ago, Chinese-branded mobile phones tried to invade the Vietnamese market with low prices. However, after a short time of existing on the market, Chinese products have been weeded out due to the lack of post-sale maintenance services and friendly service. The failure of Chinese products was seen by Vietnamese enterprises as a golden opportunity to develop their products. The enterprises, instead of simply distributing foreign made products, have shifted to outsource products to China and sell the products in Vietnam under their brands.

In general, current mobile phone brand developers are descended from either distributors of foreign made mobile phone products, who have deep knowledge about the domestic market, or mobile service providers, who try to provide application solutions, not only equipment.

The market is believed to be more bustling

According to the Trade Information Centre under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, in 2010, Vietnam imported 17 million mobile phones worth one billion dollars. 80 percent of the mobile phones sold in 2010 had a sale price of less than two million dong. Experts have predicted that the mobile phone market will witness a growth rate of 10 percent in 2011. Low cost products especially will still dominate the market. This means big opportunities for Vietnamese brands.

If counting the mobile phone products, which have import prices of less than 50 dollars, in 2010, Vietnam imported 12.3 million products, of which Nokia brand products amounted to 19 percent.

Analysts say Vietnamese brand products are now holding 50 percent of the market share, and the percentage is increasing.

Besides Q-Mobile, another brand – F-Mobile – also has witnessed considerable growth rate with 320,000 products imported in 2009 to 1.2 million in 2010, or seven percent of the market share.

Realizing the big potential of the domestic market, mobile network operators such as Viettel and VinaPhone have also been trying to market products with their brands. With their advantages in providing service, the mobile network operators have launched specific mobile phone models. Viettel, for example, has launched Zik 3G with touch screen, which runs popular operation systems such as Android and Brew, with high-speed services accessible to the Mstore.vn application store and preferential service package. VInaphone, which once cooperated with Nokia, Samsung, Western Telecom, now shakes hands with Vinacap, which also belongs to the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group, launching the Avio series.

Source: Thoi bao Vi Tinh Saigon