The Ministry of Science and Technology held its regular August press conference on August 28.

Responding to a question about the dominance of foreign OTT platforms in Vietnam, Nguyen Anh Cuong, deputy director of the Telecommunications Authority, said there are fewer than 10 major over-the-top (OTT) application platforms worldwide providing services such as internet-based messaging and calling.

In Vietnam, Zalo has grown into a major and successful platform, ranking among the country’s leaders by subscriber numbers and capable of competing on equal footing with foreign services.

Vietnamese companies have also developed and launched other platforms, including Viettel’s Tammi and Lotus Chat.

Cuong said that alongside the development of domestic products, Vietnam’s 2023 Telecommunications Law formally brought OTT services within the country’s regulatory framework under a “light-touch” approach, designed to facilitate their development rather than regulate them as heavily as traditional telecommunications services.

Major cross-border platforms including Viber, Telegram and WhatsApp have complied with the regulations, submitting notifications on their provision of services and cooperating in accordance with Vietnamese law.

Cuong described this as “something few countries in the region have been able to achieve.”

Turning to Vietnam’s longer-term development strategy, Nguyen Khac Lich, director of the Authority of Digital Technology Industry and Artificial Intelligence under the Ministry of Science and Technology, said the prime minister has approved a plan to help Vietnamese digital technology companies expand overseas.

To achieve that goal, Vietnam needs to serve as a “launchpad” by accelerating research and development of Make in Viet Nam digital technology products and drawing on the country’s large pool of IT engineers and programmers.

At the same time, Lich said Vietnam’s network of science and technology representatives in 22 key markets would serve as “landing points” to support Vietnamese companies.

These representatives are tasked with studying market demand and establishing direct connections with governments, local authorities and domestic businesses as Vietnamese digital technology companies expand internationally.

According to figures provided by Zalo, the platform had 80.2 million monthly active users by the end of the first quarter of 2026, with around 2.1 billion messages sent each day.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has not disclosed a specific user figure for Vietnam. However, at a media meeting in January, Meta Vietnam Country Director Khoi Le cited Decision Lab statistics showing that 94% of Vietnamese internet users use Facebook, while Instagram ranks among the five most-used apps among Gen Y and Gen Z users.

Du Lam