Vietnamese bargain away mobile phones, looking forward for iPhones 5

Vietnamese bargain away mobile phones, looking forward for iPhone 5

VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of Vietnamese people have been trying to sell the smart phones they are using to buy iPhone 5, which would hit the market in September. Therefore, a lot of smart phone models have become surprisingly cheap.

It is highly possible that Apple would use the name “iPhone 5” for its sixth-generation iPhone model. iPhone 5 is really a beautiful name, which is believed to be more favorite than “The New iPhone.”

As for oriental countries, including Vietnam, “four” is not a lucky numeral, while “five” is really a very lucky number because it relates to the five basic elements in the oriental philosophy and symbolizes the upper class.

Analysts believe that Apple would install a lot of special features for iPhone 5 – the first smart phone model in the post-Steve Jobs period. Especially, a director of Foxonn has said iPhone 5 would overshadow Galaxy SIII.

Vietnam, like any other markets, especially favors iPhone series. It is really a big market for iPhone products also because of the habit of Vietnamese high income earners who regularly change their smart phones. They would throw away the phones they are using to buy the next-generation products, even though the products in use are also very good with many outstanding features.

At present, iPhone 4S, HTC One X, Galaxy SIII and Lumia 900 are considered the most expensive products thanks to their diversified features.

iPhone 4S distributed by FPT now has the quoted sale price at 17.4 million dong, which is believed to be “overly high,” if noting that it is going to be a “previous-generation product.”

Meanwhile, private run hi-tech shops are selling iPhone 4S at 14.5 million dong only. However, despite the price reductions, iPhone 4S have been selling slowly on the days before the launching of the next generation iPhone.

A salesman of a shop on Ba Trieu Street admitted that it is very difficult to sell iPhone 4S in August, because consumers are now looking forward for iPhone 5.

“We wish that iPhone 5 would hit the market soon to stop the “wait-period” of clients. They would flock to our shop when they can see iPhone 5 with their eyes,” he said.

Since people expect iPhone 5, other super products have become less “glitter” in the eyes of consumers. HTC One X and Galaxy SIII, which are believed to belong to the same upper class, for example, have seen the prices decreasing.

The Gioi Di Dong, the biggest distribution chain, is now selling Galaxy SIII at 15.8 million dong and HTC One X at 15.2 million dong. Meanwhile, Nhat Cuong, a private shop, has announced the price reductions to 14.3 and 13.5 million dong.

However, despite the price reductions, the demand for the smart phone models remains weak.

“We expect the new sale season which would come in September, when students enter the new academic year,” Pham Thai, the manager of a mobile phone shop said.

“The market is very quiet now. No one would buy brand new products at this moment, when people expect a new super product,” he added.

The second hand product market has become more bustling recently, where used products have been bargained away. The sellers are the high income earners, who would sell their phones at a loss to shift to use other products.

A lot of iOS users want Android, Window Phone products, and vice versa. Especially, many people plan to buy iPhone 5s right after they hit the Vietnamese market.

Source: VTC

Transforming Your Cellphone to Make Cheap International Calls - NYTimes.com

Recently, my parents returned from Italy with a few bottles of Chianti and $750 in AT&T calling charges. Buon giorno!

With Skype Mobile, users can make free calls to other Skype phones, or calls to non-Skype phones for a fee.

Truphone permits you to make free calls to other Truphone users or to sign on to your Skype account.

Racking up exorbitant mobile charges is easy to do if you are not careful about using your cellphone internationally. AT&T charges 99 cents a minute to use your phone in Italy (rates vary by country), and that is if you pay for the carrier’s international calling plan. If you do not, the charge goes up to $1.29 a minute.

What my parents did not realize was that they could have nearly eliminated those charges if they had set up their (in this case) iPhone and BlackBerry to take advantage of mobile Internet calling services: That $1.29-a-minute charge would have gone down to a much more reasonable 2.4 cents a minute (or nothing at all if they were on a Wi-Fi network).

The Internet has been used to make calls for some time. One of the largest providers of the service, Skype, was founded in 2003 and has more than half a billion user accounts. And while many people gather around the PC to talk to far-flung friends and family, new apps and services can replicate that experience (and that savings) on cellphones.

To transform your mobile phone into a device capable of making cheap international calls, you need to consider a few things. Ideally, you have a smartphone that can access Wi-Fi, like an iPhone or a Droid. Wi-Fi ensures the best call quality, since it’s carried over a high-speed Internet connection rather than through third-generation, or 3G, cellular networks.

But if you don’t have a Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone, you are not out of luck. There are calling services that use local phone numbers rather than wireless data connections to place calls, making them compatible with a wide range of devices. Applications can dial a local access number as if you were placing a regular call; and your call is routed over the Internet at similarly discounted rates.

There are also free calling mobile applications, each with its own layout, feature list and call quality. In my tests of more than six different applications by calling friends in Europe and Africa, these stood out:

SKYPE FOR MOBILE Like the program for Mac and PCs, Skype Mobile lets you make free calls and send instant messages to fellow Skype users. You can also call non-Skype landlines and cellphones using Skype Credit, a fee-based service that charges pennies per minute for international calls.

Skype offers several mobile versions, including Skype for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Skype Lite for Java and Android phones, and Skype for Windows phones.

The application for the iPhone and iPod Touch most closely resembles Skype’s familiar desktop program. Though I could send text-based chat messages to my Skype-using friend in Belgrade over AT&T’s 3G network, I needed to connect the phone to a Wi-Fi network to make a call. (You currently cannot make Skype or other Internet-based calls on the iPhone via AT&T’s 3G network, though that could change soon.) After a simple tap of the call button, I could clearly hear his familiar accent without any noticeable lag or choppiness.

Similarly, a call I made to a friend’s cellphone in Senegal using Skype Credit was crystal clear in sound and connected in only 15 seconds. We chatted for 10 minutes, which cost me only $2.40. That same call on AT&T, even if I signed on to its international calling plan (which costs $4 a month), would have cost $8.80. Without the international calling plan, the fee would have climbed to $27.80.

For those without iPhones or Windows Mobile devices, Skype provides its Skype Lite application. Skype Lite cannot make calls over Wi-Fi or 3G networks, but instead routes calls through a local cellphone number.

It isn’t as complicated as it sounds: when using a MyTouch 3G phone, I selected a Skype contact in London. The application started the phone’s dialer and automatically routed the call to a local number. My British pal came through clear and static-free.

One thing to remember is that while calls made with Skype Lite are local and your carrier won’t exact a long-distance fee, you are technically making a call. So those calls will count against the minutes in your calling plan.

FRING Picking up where Skype Mobile leaves off, Fring provides an even richer experience on more phones. It supports calling over Wi-Fi and 3G on Android and Nokia devices; iPhone 3G calling is on the way. In addition to free calling to Fring members anywhere in the world, the service connects to Skype, Google Talk and MSN Messenger contacts.

After installing the Fring application from the Android Marketplace on Sprint’s HTC Hero, I tapped into my Skype account to call my Belgrade friend over Sprint’s network. Since I didn’t need to be in a Wi-Fi hotspot, I made the call while walking down a noisy New York street.Next Page »

16 US corporations eye Vietnam

Representatives of 16 big American corporations will visit Hanoi to search for business opportunities from May 13-15, according to the US-ASEAN Business Council.
The delegation, led by the council’s chairman, Matthew P.Dalev, CEO of General Electric in Southeast Asia, Stuart Dean, and chairman of the US-ASEAN Business Committee, will have a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Government officials.
As revealed, the group includes more than 30 senior officials of 16 groups such as Abbott Laboratories, AES, AIG, Caterpillar, Chevron, Citi, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Ford, General Electric, Guardian Industries, JHPIEGO, Monsanto, Pratt & Whitney, Time Warner and UPS.
Bilateral talks will focus on various sectors from agriculture to traffic and infrastructure, energy, aviation, finance and banking, health, express delivery and human resources.
Source: TN

China warns Exxon over Vietnam deal-newspaper

China has warned Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) to pull out of an exploration deal with Vietnam, describing the project as a breach of Chinese sovereignty, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.

The article, which cited "sources close to the U.S. firm", said Chinese diplomats in Washington had made repeated verbal protests to Exxon Mobil executives in recent months, and warned them its future business interests on the mainland could be at risk.

The protests involve a preliminary co-operation agreement between state oil firm PetroVietnam and Exxon Mobil covering exploration in the South China Sea off Vietnam's south and central coasts, the article said.

It did not state when the co-operation agreement was signed.

The report quoted the unnamed sources as saying Exxon Mobil was confident of Vietnam's sovereign rights to the blocks it was exploring, but it could not dismiss China's warnings out of hand.

The newspaper said China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to queries about the situation and an Exxon Mobil spokesman refused to discuss any approaches from China.

But it quoted Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung as saying it needed to be "clearly asserted" that Hanoi's dealings with foreign oil partners fell entirely within Vietnam's legal rights and sovereignty.

China and Vietnam have a number of festering disagreements about territory. The two countries dispute sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, a string of rocky outcrops in the South China Sea suspected of containing large oil and gas deposits and also claimed by Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.

China supported the Vietnamese Communists in their decades-long war against South Vietnam and its U.S. sponsors.

Flag-waving questions beg patriot's reply | courier-journal |

As America gears up for its Fourth of July birthday party without all the birthright optimism of its past, much less being able to afford the ice cream and cake, I'm thinking about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the presidential race -- and the price of gasoline.
Today's flag-waving questions for all automatic patriots:
Unless you have family or friends in the military, what kind of real sacrifices have you made to support the men and women fighting these wars -- as in at least being willing to pay for them?
If it turns out our presence in oil-rich Iraq will help feed America's selfish energy needs, does that help justify its cost in tax dollars and lives?
For those with mixed feelings about the war, is there now a tiny part of you saying, yes, we now need to do whatever it takes to boost our steadily slipping standard of living?
Was this war, as many have charged, really about access to oil all along? Since there were no weapons of mass destruction, and democracy in Iraq remains an ethnic-charged illusion, are you willing to rationalize our permanent presence there if it will help keep gasoline under $5 a gallon?
With four giant oil companies -- Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP -- hovering over no-bid Iraqi oil concessions, have all those soldiers died in part to help keep oil company profits at obscenely high levels?
Just something to think about as you drive to the lake.
The presidential race of late has become bogged down in military rhetoric and symbolism -- but what else is new?
The symbolism thing comes way too easily. Barack Obama never served in the military -- the great majority of Americans do not these days -- but John Wayne never did, either. So which one would be your first choice to lead the country into war -- and why?
Gen. Wesley Clark, an Obama supporter who was seriously wounded and won a Silver Star while a company commander in Vietnam, took some verbal shots at John McCain, who was a tortured POW in Vietnam for 5½ years, by saying, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."
Nobody wins at that level of argument -- and Obama backed away from it. But if military record and experience is so important, how did we end up with our present commander in chief?
He used family influence to get into the Air National Guard during a time when that mostly insured not seeing any combat -- and ended up fighting the Vietnam War in Alabama.
Granted, he is now the lamest of ducks, but where was all the military argument -- unless you consider "swiftboating" military patriotism -- the last time around?
Just something to think about on the way to see the kids.
Which brings us to the cost of gasoline to get there. The news headline that most brought that chicken home to roost went, "Energy experts puzzled over oil prices."
They are not alone. From what I've read, the nation's demand is down just a tad, the availability of oil is steady -- and the price at the pump jumps 20 cents a day.
My fully unscientific theory is that we are being had by oil companies -- who will again reap enormous profits -- cynical politics, market manipulators and greed.
Just something to think about while driving to the Fourth of July parade.
Bob Hill's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach him at (502) 582-4646 or bhill@courier-journal.com. Comment on this column, and read his blog and previous columns, at http://www.courier-journal.com/bobhill

Flag-waving questions beg patriot's reply courier-journal The Courier-Journal

Shooting rampage by Vietnam soldier leaves 5 dead

A Vietnamese soldier shot and killed four people and seriously injured five others before shooting himself dead, state media and witnesses reported Wednesday.
The soldier, identified as Nguyen Manh Hung, 23, reportedly became enraged after being accused of stealing a mobile phone. He grabbed an assault rifle from a locker and began shooting inside an army compound in Hanoi on Monday night, the Tien Phong (Pioneer) newspaper said.
Hung killed three soldiers and a civilian woman, the newspaper said.
"I heard at least two series of gunshots which were several minutes apart," said a resident whose house was next to the walled military compound. "The area was quickly sealed off and local residents were asked to go home," she said, declining to give her name for fear of government reprisal.
A police officer at Hang Bot precinct, where the army unit is located, said he and some other colleagues rushed to the area after hearing the shots.
"When we arrived at the scene, an army colonel stood at the gate and told us to leave saying this is military internal affairs," he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
City military officials declined to comment Wednesday, but the story was widely publicized in Vietnam's state-run newspapers with military sources quoted.
Murder, or any type of violent crime, is extremely rare in Vietnam where use of arms is strictly prohibited.