Vietnam’s leading mobile phone distributors all have begun taking orders for iPhone 7s, one week sooner than expected. About 30,000 iPhone 7s were ordered from November 4-10, double the number of 13,000 Galaxy Note 7s ordered in one week in mid-August.

The buyers have paid deposits for purchase at the largest distribution chains such as FPT Shop, Vien Thong, The Gioi Di Dong and CellphoneS.

A representative of FPT Shop said that 65 percent of ordered products are iPhone 7 Plus. Assuming that all buyers want 32 GB versions, Vietnamese spent over VND600 billion to buy the next-generation iPhone just within one week.

As such, Vietnamese still lust for iPhone 7 even though the model has been criticized as ‘uninspiring’ with no considerable improvement.

The same trend is happening in other markets in the world. Bizlive cited a survey as reporting that up to 80 percent of users won’t buy iPhone 7 if iPhone 7 just looks similar to the previous-generation version. However, the product has been selling like hot cakes.

In Vietnam, analysts said that some large retail chains have made new sales records thanks to big orders for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Vietnam’s leading mobile phone distributors all have begun taking orders for iPhone 7s, one week sooner than expected. About 30,000 iPhone 7s were ordered from November 4-10, double the number of 13,000 Galaxy Note 7s ordered in one week in mid-August.

They said the number of 30,000 iPhones ordered showed that demand for high-end products has never cooled in Vietnam. 

iPhone 7 can sell well despite the lack of breakthroughs and improvements partially because Samsung, the biggest direct rival, has stopped the production of Galaxy Note 7 because of fire and explosion problems. Meanwhile, other Android-run models have not caught users’ attention.

If not buying iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, Vietnamese users won’t have other choices in the high-end market segment.

As there is no other serious rival which can bar its way, Apple is expected to continue seeing sales of iPhone 7 increasing sharply in the time to come.

Analysts said that smartphone manufacturing would be the sector to deal a strong blow to Samsung this year, because the South Korean manufacturer not only has tasted defeat with Galaxy Note 7, but also has to be cautious about the strong rise of mid-end products such as Oppo or Huawei.

Samsung’s Galaxy J7 Prime, a mid-end model, for example, now has to compete fiercely with Oppo’s F1s. A report showed that 395,000 F1s products had been sold by early November.

In related news, VinaPhone, one of the three largest Vietnamese mobile network operators and Apple’s product distributors, is not distributing iPhone 7 this year.


Thanh Lich