At 9 am, six visitors were seen inside the The Gioi Di Dong smartphone shop on Ly Thuong Kiet street in HCMC. A girl asked the salesman about Sony’s Xperia XA1 which had the quoted price of VND4.49 million. However, finally, she decided to buy Samsung’s Galaxy J7 which had the same selling price.

The customer, a student at the HCMC University of Science & Technology, told reporters that it is better to take pictures with Sony, but she did not choose Sony’s product because she heard that Sony may leave Vietnam.

The salesman said that Sony would not leave Vietnam as rumoured. “Sony’s software is good with many useful apps. Vietnamese don’t like Sony because they cannot discover all the features,” he said.

“Vietnamese youth, who always follow the crowd, like Samsung, iPhone and Oppo, so they don’t try the products of other brands,” he commented.

However, the salesman said that the sales of Sony products in the first week of September were modest despite the sharp price cut of 30 percent.

“Only two products were sold, one VND1.99 million, and one VND2.99 million product,” he said.

Q. Khanh, the owner of a private shop on 3 Thang 2 street in HCMC, told reporters that Sony products have been selling slowly for a long time, and that sales had not improved in the promotion campaign.

Pointing to some Sony models on the shelf, Khanh said the products were just for display, and he doesn’t have brand new products. Since the beginning of the year, Khanh has sold only one Sony priced at VND6.7 million.

Khanh said manufacturers decide to dump stock to either clear old-generation products to launch new models, or to leave the market.

“I don’t think Sony will launch new models,” he said, adding that Sony may plan to leave Vietnam after it leaves Australia.

According to GfK, a market analysis firm, Sony products only accounted for 2.4 percent of the Vietnamese smartphone market share in 2018, lower than the 3.8 percent in 2016.

A local newspaper quoted the marketing director of an electronics company in HCMC as saying that Vivo and Sony would follow LG’s move to leave Vietnam as their business performance is poor.

“Sony has delayed the announcement because the inventory level is high and clients still owe money to it,” he said. 

Sony has been present in Vietnam since 1994.

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