Should mobile phone manufacturers confront with foreign brands or ward off?
LookAtVietnam – It is obvious that Vietnamese mobile phone brands have been
dislodged from the home market. They have lost the low-cost product market
segment and cannot squeeze into the smart phone market.
Reports all show that Nokia is still leading the market, especially after it has
regained the low-cost market segment. Meanwhile, Samsung and HTC are still
dominating the smart phone market. What should Vietnamese mobile phone
manufacturers do–competing directly or avoid the foreign big guys?
2012: Difficulties ahead
Dinh Anh Huan, Director of The Gioi Di Dong distribution chain, one of the
biggest mobile phone distributors in Vietnam, has noted that the smart phones
are in high demand in the Vietnamese market, but Vietnamese manufacturers still
cannot catch up with the new tendency.
In fact, Q-Mobile once launched a smart phone model, S10, into the market,
priced at 4 million dong. However, it could not compete with international well
known brands.
A market survey by IDC has pointed out that the Vietnamese smart phone market
would obtain the high growth rate of 51 percent in 2012. Chu Tien Dung,
President of the Quang Trung Software Park Development Company, also said at a
recent workshop that about 3 million smart phones would be consumed in Vietnam
this year.
Meanwhile, Vietnamese brands still cannot reach out to the market.
Huan thinks that the purchasing power would not increase in 2012, since the
economic difficulties still exist. This means that Vietnamese brands would meet
bigger difficulties to conquer the market. In the low-cost product market
segment, where Vietnamese brands have biggest advantages, Nokia remains a giant,
while Samsung would also jump on the bandwagon.
After Q-Mobile’s first smart phone did not succeed on the market, Samsung market
Galaxy Y, priced at less than 3.5 million dong which was described as a strong
blow dealt on the efforts by Vietnamese manufacturers to make smart phones.
Opportunities still available for Vietnamese brands to grab
It seems that Vietnamese manufacturers have no more opportunities to get a
foothold on the domestic market. The competition would be even fiercer this year
among popular product brands. Meanwhile, in order to successfully compete with
foreign giants, Vietnamese brands need to make out the products which have the
sale prices at less than 2.5 million dong. Meanwhile, the current high
accessories prices would not allow Vietnamese brands to make this realistic.
Even if the accessories prices in the world go down in the time to come,
Vietnamese manufacturers would not have opportunities. The first beneficiaries
from the price decreases would be the international manufacturers who place big
orders. Meanwhile, the manufacturers also can make some kinds of accessories
themselves; therefore, they would be able to churn out the products with high
technologies and reasonable prices.
So what should Vietnamese brands do? Ngo Nguyen Kha, Mobistar’s Director, said
that competing directly or avoiding big manufacturers would not be the way out.
He said if Vietnamese manufacturers can find reasonable niche markets, they
would be able to survive. Mobistar, for example, has marketed low-cost touch
products with associated apps, and plans to market 3D models in the near future.
These could be seen as the “pre-smart phone” series, which would pave the way
for Vietnamese brands to join the smart phone market when there are favorable
conditions.
However, Huan has warned that the pre-smart phone series should be valued at
less than 2 million dong to become competitive. Smart phone prices are on the
decrease, and it is very likely to see Android-based smart phone series, priced
at 2 million dong, to appear on the market.
Source: Lao dong
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