VietNamNet Bridge – Five years ago, people believed that 99 percent of the ideas to sell Vietnamese mobile phone brands would fail completely. However, the success of many Vietnamese brands recently has made people change their minds.

The mobile phone market is now witnessing the rise of Vietnamese brands.

The “Q-Mobile phenomenon”

Doan Thanh Nhan, a senior executive of Viettel Import-Export Company, which is now holding a large share of the mobile phone distribution market, said that Q-Mobile are the now the best sellers among Vietnamese brands being distributed by Viettel chain. The turnover from Q-Mobile sale now accounts for 15-20 percent of the total turnover of Viettel.

Jumping into the mobile phone market in mid 2008, ABTel, the owner of A-Mobile brand, is now considered the most successful enterprise in the market of Vietnamese brands.

According to Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam, Q-Mobile products are now accounting for 30 percent of the domestic market. The products are dominating the market for low income earners (the products are priced between 600,000 dong and two million dong). Q-Mobile are selling well in provinces, not in big cities.

However, ABTel has set a very ambitious plan for itself. “Q-Mobile hopes it can surpass Nokia to become the leading brand in Vietnam’s mobile market by the end of the next year,” said Nguyen Quang Minh, General Director of ABTel.

ABTel is planning to expand its market by exporting products to neighboring countries such as Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and African countries. It also hopes to become the leading 3G phone provider in Vietnam.

There are more than one Q-Mobile

After realizing that the mobile phone market is still a fertile land, FPT decided to join the market in 2008. FPT has not achieved much, but it made a breakthrough when launching a competitively priced 1,890,000 dong smart phone F99 into the market.

In particular, the HCM City-based Hong Ngoc Company not only tries to join the market of low cost products, but it has also announced the plan to attack the luxury market by marketing the products which have high prices at over 25 million dong.
Nhan said that the sale of mobile phone products with Vietnamese brands that Viettel Import-Export Company is distributing can bring 20-25 percent of the total turnover from mobile phone sales. “The products with Vietnamese brands have reasonable prices, while they also have high quality, therefore, they are favored by the customers from provinces,” Nhan said.

Viettel, one of the three biggest mobile phone service provider, has also decided to jump on the bandwagon. After one year of researching and developing, Viettel has launched 250,000 Homephone products. The products were outsourced to South Korea, while Viettel chooses the partners, supervises the production and tests the quality of products.

An expert said that just looking at the high salary of 30 million dong a month that Viettel payed to an expert who once worked for Motorola, one would understand about the ambition of Viettel.

For or against?

Though having been successful in sales, the products with Vietnamese brands are facing a bad reputation with the public. The products have been accused of “having Vietnamese covers and Chinese hearts”.

The problem is that the products have Vietnamese brands, but they are made in other countries, mostly in China.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese enterprises have affirmed that they cannot see any problems here.

“There is no company in the world which makes everything, from A to Z. They only focus on designing the core, the software of products, while they have the hardware outsourced to other partners,” said Bui Ngoc Khanh, General Director of FPT Technology Product Company. “This proves to be the shortest way for Vietnamese enterprises to build up real Vietnamese brand names”.

Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam