An iPhone 4 fever has appeared on Vietnam’s market ever since the “apple” began selling in Vietnam on September 30. The strange thing is that while Vietnamese customers are thirsty for “apples”, Vietnamese companies are only importing dribs and drabs of the product.Â

Buyers told to keep waiting and waiting

Trinh Thanh Hai, who works for Daewoo Hotel in Hanoi, related that he booked an iPhone on Viettel’s website, one of the two iPhone 4 distributors in Vietnam, in mid October. However, in late November, when he arrived at a Viettel customer care center to buy the iPhone 4, he was told to keep waiting.

Some people told Hai that if he really wants to purchase an iPhone 4, he has to have “close relationship” with the leadership of Viettel group. Finally, Hai, a frenetic fan of iPhone 4, had to take full advantage of his relationship with a senior officer of VinaPhone to successfully purchase his iPhone.

“Besides Viettel, I also registered to book iPhone at two shops of VinaPhone in Hanoi. At the shop No 4 Lang Ha street, my registered number was 42, while at the shop No 57 Huynh Thuc Khang, my registered number of 251. However, I have not got any reply from the shops so far,” he said.

A lot of “faithful” fans of the iPhone 4 have placed advertisements on forums stating that they want to buy the rights to purchase the iPhone 4 from other people, because they do not want to wait any more. A person with the nickname “topmen@” persistently entreated other members of the forum to re-sell iPhone 4 to him.

According to Pham Ngoc Tu, Head of the Marketing Division of VinaPhone, at first the company asked customers to register on their website at www.vinaphone.com.vn in-order to purchase the phone. However, since their far too many clients for the limited product, Vinaphone has asked customers to come directly to VinaPhone’s shops to register and then wait for calls from the distributor.

When planning to import iPhone 4, Viettel Telecom set up a system allowing to accept sale registrations online and from direct sale locations. However, since tens thousands of people are queuing to purchase iPhone 4, Viettel has stopped accepting sale registrations. It has decided to organize lucky drawings to determine who has the right to buy the iPhone 4. Therefore, the market of the iPhone 4 options is very hot on the Internet and every option is now priced at some millions dong.

When selling 240 iPhone 4s at eight sale points in the north, south and central regions on November 14, at No 55B Phan Dang Luu in HCM City, Viettel had to auction the product because there were too many customers who came in groups. At VinaPhone’s shops, on the first day of selling iPhone 4, September 30, many customers had to begin queuing early in the morning to attend the lucky draw.

High demand not anticipated

According to Viettel, while the demand for iPhone 4 is increasingly high, the manufacturer only provides the products in dribs and drabs.

Also according to Viettel, the market needs some 150,000 iPhone 4s per annum, or 12,500 products per month. Especially in the first three months since the product was launched into the market, the market needs 20,000 products a month.

“The demand is very high. If Apple still keeps providing products in dribs and drabs, I don’t know when the iPhone 4 fever will end,” Tu said.

Meanwhile, in September and October, Apple only provided 2000 iPhone 4s a month. Some analysts believe that Apple did not anticipate such a high demand.

In Singapore, customers once had to book products two weeks in advance to be able to purchase products. In Hong Kong, the online sale registration has stopped due to the short supply.

According to Viettel Telecom, since September, the company has imported 3300 iPhone 4 and it is seeking more imports to satisfy the demand. All the imports have been selling quickly through Viettel’s distribution network. Viettel hopes it can import 10,000 more products for the last two months of the year.

Source: Tien phong