VietNamNet Bridge – The high-end smartphone market in Vietnam is now dominated by Samsung, Nokia and Apple.
Nokia and Samsung were bestsellers in Vietnam in the first eight months of the year, according to GfK, a market survey firm.
Though Samsung is the most popular brand in the world, it is Nokia that sold the highest number of products in Vietnam the first eight months.
Nokia reportedly held 43.4 percent of the market share considering the number of smartphones sold, followed by Samsung with 20.1 percent.
Sony, HTC and LG were ranked in the middle positions in the list, while Vietnamese brands like Mobiistar, Q-mobile and Chinese Oppo were mostly sold to low-income earners.
However, though the number of smartphones sold was double that of Samsung, Nokia’s revenue was lower than the South Korean manufacturer, 28.8 percent vs 29.4 percent.
The lower positions belonged to Apple (10.6 percent), Oppo (6.2 percent), Sony (5.8 percent) and Q-mobile 4.2 percent.
Analysts noted that of the 100 smartphone brands available in Vietnam, the biggest market share was held by Samsung and Nokia.
According to GfK Vietnam, 400,000 mobile phones of different kinds were sold every week in Vietnam, worth $48 million. With high market demand, it is expected that 21 million products will be sold in Vietnam by the end of the year, an increase of 15 percent over the previous year.
The number of feature phones sold still accounted for 51 percent of the mobile phone market, but the revenue from smartphones accounted for 87 percent of the total sales.
The market survey firm believes that the Vietnamese mobile phone market is worth $2.4 billion, of which 1/3 belongs to Nokia and Samsung.
The statistics showed that while Nokia mostly earns money from the products with reasonable prices, Samsung mostly targets medium-tier and high-end market segments.
A local newspaper recently published an article, commenting that Samsung has been very successful in Vietnam.
The article quoted a technology expert as saying that in Vietnam, only iPhones can compete with Samsung’s smartphones in terms of popularity. Vietnamese like iPhones, but the number of mobile devices bearing the South Korean brand is not much lower than the US brand.
Market survey firms pointed out that Samsung Galaxy S3 was once even better known than Apple’s iPhone 4S.
Samsung not only can make money in Vietnam from high-end phones, but also from medium-class and low-cost products. It joined forces with Zing to market Galaxy Y, a low-cost model for the youth, priced at less than VND3 million.
The expert noted that Samsung can conquer Vietnamese hearts because it tries to please Vietnamese customers. In 2014, Samsung launched Galaxy V with a “very reasonable selling price”, specifically designed for the Vietnamese market.
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