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VietNamNet Bridge – Mobile phone distributors, who could not anticipate the low purchasing demand, imported a big amount of mobile phones in the first quarter of 2011. However, the sales have been going very slowly.
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January 2011 was the month which saw the biggest import volume with 2.5 million mobile phones imported. The imports decreased in February to one million, and then increased again to 1.5 million in March.
Of the imports, low-value phones priced at less than one million dong, accounted for a big proportion. About 3.1 million mobile phones of this group were imported to Vietnam in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, there were about 650,000 mobile phones valued at less than two million dong.
Among the most well known brands, Nokia is still leading the market, while the second position belongs to Viettel, followed by Q-Mobile, FPT, Avio, Mobell and K-Touch. The products with the above said brands accounted for 80 percent of the imports in the first quarter.
The first quarter was the time which had the biggest import volume so far. Explaining this, an importer, who asked to be anonymous, said that importers tried to import big amounts of mobile phones in order to prepare for the sale on Tet month – February. Meanwhile, they also rushed to import mobile phones in March, because they heard the decision on restricting the imports of mobile phones, which took effects as of March 25. The importers wanted to import more mobile phones to have products to sell in April.
However, the importer said that since importers face big difficulties when collecting dollars to make payment for imports, and since the purchasing power remains low on the domestic market, the provisioned goods are not considerable.
It seems that distributors could not imagine that the demand would be so low. The sales have reportedly decreased by 30 percent when compared with the same period of the last year. There are no official statistics about the mobile phone inventory volume, but Saigon Tiep Thi has quoted its sources as saying that the stocks had reached 1.5 million products by the end of March.
Especially, the majority of inventories are low value mobile phones which have the prices of less than 2 million dong, while the number of luxurious products is low.
Huynh Viet Thuong, a senior executive from Vien Thong A, a big distributor in Vietnam, said that distributors could not anticipate the low demand this year; therefore, the inventories prove to be big.
“Retailers cannot sell products, which will cause big difficulties to importers as well,” Thuong said.
However, according to Thuong, though the number of mobile phones sold is not big, high grade products are still selling well.
According to Dinh Anh Huan, Director of the Gioi Dien Tu distribution chain, it would be not difficult to sell inventories, though he admitted that the demand is on the decrease.
Huan believes that the high inventory level would prompt importers to reduce the import volume in the next months. Especially, the imports with the value from one to five million dong would see sharp declines in the upcoming months.
Earlier this month, local newspapers reported that big mobile phone manufacturers announced the considerable price reductions of 10-30 percent for their products, while Chinese and Vietnamese brand mobile phones only saw slight decreases
The biggest price decrease was seen with the Black Berry Bold 9000. Some Nokia’s models such as E63, 1680, N97 mini, and 5230 saw the price decreases between 10.7 and 13.1 percent. Sony Ericsson U100i and Malata K200 had the price decreases of 13 and 11.7 percent, respectively.
Source: SGTT
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