VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnamese smarthome manufacturers believe that their products are the best in the world, but they are still afraid of low-cost Chinese products.

Unlike the smartphone market which is controlled by foreign brands, the smarthome market is a playing field for Vietnamese manufacturers. However, they have been warned that low-cost, low-quality Chinese products may damage the market. 

Analysts began talking about the strong development of the Vietnamese smarthome market some years ago, believing that the increasingly high number of smart devices would prompt people to use smarthomes.

However, their prediction has not come true yet because of three reasons.

First, Vietnamese don’t think they need to change their habit of using on/off contact, though they know with the controller, accidents sometimes happen while power is wasted. Many Vietnamese think it is not necessary to use smarthome though they are quite capable of paying pay for it.

Second, smarthome is considered luxurious for Vietnamese with the cheapest system priced at VND500-700 million. The products are believed to be designed specifically for  rich people.

Third, Vietnamese are worried about the complexity and the instability of the system. They fear that modern equipment will require complicated operations and regular maintenance.

Made-in-Vietnam smarthome dominating market

Vietnamese technology firms have been trying to fix the problems to make smartphones more popular with Vietnamese.

BKAV of Nguyen Tu Quang, a well known information technology (IT) expert and ACIS founded by the former students of the HCM City University of Technology, are the two best known names in the smarthome market now.

BKAV has been well known for many years with made-in-Vietnam anti-virus products. Meanwhile, ACIS is considered a ‘seed company’ in the HCM City High-tech Park’s incubator. It now reportedly holds 70 percent of the southern market.

The common characteristic of the two companies is that they can design and manufacture products and use wireless transmission system.

BKAV now uses Singapore’s Zigbee system, while ACIS uses Meshgrid it develops itself. Besides, its interface regulated by 3D image has been registered to the National Office of Intellectual Property.

Do Thanh Dong, director of ACIS, said ACIS began working on smarthome in 2004 and it experienced a lot of failures for eight years before it was able to create the smarthome of its own with ACIS Smarthome EASY Control brand.

When asked about competitors, Dong said he is not afraid of foreign famous companies such as Gama and Siemens from Germany, Scheinders from France and Fibaro from Poland, because the manufacturers target their market segments.  What he is afraid of are the products made in China but bear US and EU brands.

“Low-quality products from China may damage the market and will make Vietnam’s high-quality products suffer,” he said.

Chi Mai