The Bkav Technology Group has spent VND500 billion (nearly US$22 million) since 2009 on researching and producing the indigenous smart phone called Bphone, its CEO Nguyen Tu Quang has revealed.

Speaking to the media in Ha Noi on Wednesday shortly after the launch of Bphone 2, he said the company’s immediate objective was to gain the Vietnamese consumer’s trust, although the group was having to absorb the losses incurred by the smart phone project.

Quang said that Bphone 2 was 100 per cent manufactured by Bkav, with just 0.9 per cent of the components are made in China.

He said that when Bphone 1 was launched in 2015, he was stressed out for a year by users’ criticisms.

He read more than 100 pages of criticisms online in one night, which is why it took two years for Bphone 2 to be released.

With Bphone 2, Quang reiterated that the primary goal was to win the trust of Vietnamese users, not earn profit.

When asked why he did not produce cheaper phones for easier sales, he said the bigger aspiration was for Viet Nam to have a Vietnamese-made smart phone industry, and for Bkav to become a leading smart phone maker in the world.

Quang said he asked himself and others if they wanted Viet Nam to have a world class smart phone brand like Samsung, Apple or Xiaomi, people told him that they wished Bkav would be like Samsung or Apple.

Therefore, the decision to focusing on the high-end segment was to demonstrate that Bkav and the Vietnamese have the capacity to make high-end products, he said.

Bkav also plans to expand its range with mid and high-end models like Bphone 2017 Gold, Quang said, adding that the Bkav’s current technology and resources are sufficient to produce smart phones like Samsung or Apple.

He said that even at the price of VND9,789,000, the Bkav group would have to bear losses on the Bphone2. 

VNS