VietNamNet Bridge – Signs of unhealthy competition are creeping up in the mobile app market, with some concerned that this may hinder development of online service businesses.

Mobile app stores mushrooming

Appstore.vn is an address familiar to the majority of Vietnamese smartphone users, primarily because it made its debut at a time when few other app stores existed.

However, things are quite different now. A series of new app stores has sprung up recently, and a lot of new names have appeared. These include Vietnamese app stores like 365app.vn launched by VNG, 365app(pro) and Appcent.vn by SSGroup, and Appsync.vn and AppHD.vn by mWork. And foreign-run app stores have also turned up to serve the Vietnamese market, including the Chinese Mobogenie of Changyou.

Most of the app stores offer multi-platform wares – for Windows, Android and iOS operation systems, and most of them are free to users. Most notably, SSGroup’s Appcent offers a free film store, while mWork’s Appsync focuses on games.

Explaining the mushrooming appearances of app stores, an expert said that information technology (IT) firms, hearing that 2014 would be the year of mobility, have made heavy investments in the field.

Also according to the expert, the main goal of Vietnamese firms when launching app stores is to attract users, which would help them obtain more customers when developing games for mobile devices.

Unhealthy competition would harm everyone

The expert noted that he seeing some acts of unhealthy competition being conducted by the developers of the app stores. As all the developers want to obtain high rates of positive votes for their app stores, they try to “buy” votes from relatives.

When firms launch their app stores on Google Play (as apps), the app stores receive marks and comments from users. Five stars is the highest possible rating for an app.

In attempts to belittle other app stores and put their app stores in higher positions, businesses ask their partners, friends and relatives to award five-star ratings to their apps, and/or make bad comments about the rivals’ stores.

Vietnamese users, who tend to follow the crowd when making decisions, seldom download apps that are harshly criticized.

A representative of SSGroup recently complained that the firm has become a victim of a “dirty trick” played by a rival. On March 16, a forged Appcent app appeared on Facebook’s ad network as a “Suggested App”.

Facebook users were highly astonished when they were told by friends that they “suggested” the app with pornographic images.  If a user then clicked “install app”, the ad piece would lead them to Google Play to download Appcent .

SSGroup put out a press release to the mass media, informing the public about the forged app and saying that it is working with Facebook to ask the social network to lock the fake account and provide more information about it.

It is clear to everyone that unhealthy competition benefits no one, while it can hinder development of the online [app] business.

In order to settle the problem, it is necessary for state management agencies  and IT firms to sit together and discuss solutions. However, this does not happen regularly in Vietnam.

Buu Dien