VietNamNet Bridge – The smart phone boom has brought the golden opportunity to enterprises to polish their images at reasonable costs. Analysts believe that it is now the time of mobile marketing.

Golden opportunities have come

A report of GFK showed that just within one year, from June 2012 to June 2013, the number of smart phones sold on the market increased by two folds, from 192,000 to 500,000 products. This means that 38 percent of the mobile phones sold every month is smart phones.

The market surveys have found not only the sharp increase in the number of smart phone users, but also the big changes in the users’ phone habits.

According to Carl Ngo Nguyen Kha, CEO of Mobiistar, in late 2012, Vietnamese used smart phones like feature phones, which meant that they used smart phones just to make and receive calls and messages. However, things have changed a lot.

A Google’s survey found that 70 percent of people use smart phones to search for information, watch videos, download apps or access to social networks. Meanwhile, 60 percent of people said they use the phones to make shopping.

“While the increased number of sold smart phones brings benefits to manufacturers, the changes of the users’ habit can bring benefits to other enterprises, because they can serve as the best advertisement instrument,” Kha noted.

Pham Tien Thinh, Managing Director of Internet New Horizon JSC, also thinks that mobile marketing is the easiest way for enterprises to popularize their brands.

A survey conducted by New Horizon has found that 65 percent of smart phone users said they do not feel disturbed if receiving ad pieces when using apps or accessing webs with their smart phones.

Time to do e-marketing

E-marketers have taken actions to take full advantage of the golden opportunities. Wada is a typical example.

“Though we have launched a lot of apps at the same time, Wada will still focus on the ad market,” Thinh said.

The first step that Wada has taken is cooperating with device manufacturers to optimize the apps on smart phones.

This is also the strategy being followed by Lazada, an online sale service provider.  Christopher B.Ben, Managing Director of Lazada, the service provider would join forces with mobile phone manufacturers, including Mobiistar in the immediate time, to create an e-commerce ecology on smart phone, which would serve the advertisement and sale.

VNG, the firm which is considered the biggest business in the digital industry, has become the exclusive partner of Inmobi in providing mobile phone-based ad solutions.

Inmobi is believed to be the world’s biggest independent mobile ad network with 691 million users in 165 countries. With the move, VNG has shown its ambitious plan to dominate the multi-media market.

Nguyen Hoang Que Nga, Deputy General Director of VNG, has noted that posting ads on smart phones proves to be the best solution for now and that the advertisers in Vietnam have made their presence in the field.

To date, only 20 percent of the population uses smart phones. However, Kha believes that the number would increase rapidly in the near future, which means larger opportunities to both phone manufacturers and app developers.

DNSG