VietNamNet Bridge – While mobile network operators previously only focused on
selling high-grade mobile phones associated with service packages, they now
target the low-cost market segment, since manufacturers rush to popularize the
hi-tech products.
The sixth mobile network operator in Vietnam – Vietnamobile – has said that it
would run a series of sale promotion campaigns in 2013 to give more
opportunities to consumers to approach its services.
Vietnamobile’s salesman teams would be present in many provinces and cities to
give advices and distribute simcards directly to customers. Especially, it plans
to join forces with some mobile phone manufacturers to implement a plan to bring
popular smart phone products with integrated Vietnamobile simcards directly to
customers.
A senior executive of Vietnamobile has revealed that the products to be used in
the campaigns are low cost smart phones, priced at less than VND4 million.
Though these are low cost products, they not only can satisfy the basic needs,
but also can be used to surf on Internet, take pictures and shoot videos.
In fact, the marketing method called “selling beer together with finger food” –
selling mobile phones integrated with services – was once applied by VinaPhone,
MobiFone and Viettel, the three biggest Vietnamese mobile network operators, in
2011 already.
At that time, the two mobile phone product lines the network operators mostly
used to attract customers were high grade smart phones – iPhone and Black Berry,
which were sold at tens of millions of dong, or very cheap products, priced at
no more than VND2 million. However, there have been big changes so far.
The military telco Viettel has recently announced that it successfully makes the
smart phone series with two integrated simcards priced at less than VND2
million.
“Low cost smart phones prove to be a growing tendency for now, especially in the
context of the economic difficulties. We will offer more products to customers
for their choices that fit their pockets,” he said.
A source from MobiFone has revealed that the mobile network operator planned to
cooperate with a low cost mobile phone manufacturer to run a campaign to sell
simcards together with phone sets.
“The negotiations are nearly completing and we hope we can reach an agreement
right in the first quarter of 2013,” the source said.
Prior to that, Beeline, which is now Gmobile, also joined forces with a big
South Korean mobile phone manufacturer to develop a similar marketing plan. The
products it planned to use for the plan were the smart phones priced at between
VND2.5 million and VND5 million.
A report by GfK showed that 16 million mobile phone sets were sold in Vietnam in
2012 with the total revenue of VND27 trillion. The figure was believed to be
below the expectation with the purchasing power down by 10 percent, while the
market grew by 10-15 percent in previous years.
However, the hallmark of the market in 2012 was the strong rise of smart phones,
especially the ones running on Android operation system. The product series now
account for 18 percent in quantity and 50 percent in value.
Le Thao Trang, Marketing Director of Thegioididong, the biggest mobile phone
distributor in Vietnam, said the number of products to be sold in 2013 would not
be much higher than in 2012, but the revenue is believed to increase
significantly, because smart phones would be the main products to be sold.
TBKTVN