VietNamNet Bridge - Will smartphones from India be able to find a position in the Vietnamese market?


The face of the Vietnamese smartphone market this year is expected to see big changes with the presence of products from India.

Some distribution chains will distribute Intex’s products in Vietnam.

Intex is the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in India. It was the manufacturer which pioneered in the Myanmar market last year with Aqua Life-II and Aqua Y2 models. They were distributed on online by shop.com.mm.

To date, the Vietnamese market has been dominated by strong brands like Apple and Samsung which target high income earners, and Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Mobell and Huawei, which make low-cost products.

The face of the Vietnamese smartphone market this year is expected to see big changes with the presence of products from India.

Analysts believe that Indian products will compete with Chinese ones in the low-cost market segment. 

India has certain advantages even though it is not well known for such devices. What Indian manufacturers are doing in their home market is an indication.

According to GfK and Canalys, the market survey firms, it is not Chinese manufacturers, but Indian firms such as Micromax, Karbonn Mobiles, Intex and Lava, which are competing fiercely with the market leader Samsung. 

In the fourth quarter of 2014, Canalys even reported that Micromax outstripped Samsung with 22 percent of the market vs 20 percent.

Indian manufacturers focus on exploiting the low-cost market segment where products are priced at $150-200. Freedom 251 is sold at $7 only, which is affordable for hundreds of millions of Indian residents.

With their technology and low production cost, according to Doan Hong Viet, president and CEO of Digiworld, Vietnam’s largest computing device distribution chain, Indian products can compete with Chinese and offer more choices to Vietnamese low-income earners.

Nguyen Hung Tien, an information technology student at Hanoi University of Technology, when asked about Indian smartphones, said he would try the products from India.

“Why wouldn’t I try Indian products if Chinese are unsafe with security problems?” he said.

Local newspapers have reported that some Chinese products are installed with software which automatically collect users’ personal information.

A report from GfK showed that the number of smartphones sold in Vietnam in the first half of 2015 increased by 27 percent to 6 million products in comparison with the first half of 2014.  

With the highest growth rate in South East Asia, Vietnam is the third largest market in the region, after Indonesia and Thailand.

Seven Indian companies, headed by Tata Group, have said that they consider Vietnam and Myanmar as the key markets this year.