The owners of well known Vietnamese phone brands believe that they will cement a firm position on the domestic market following a successful 2010. They have announced that they will not only dominate the low-cost market segment, but also conquer the medium-and high-customers this year.

A lot of Vietnamese brands have got a foothold in the mobile phone market, namely Q-Mobile, FPT, Hanel, and CMC, or Viettel in the near future. Well understanding the market demand and the localization skill are the two factors that are their advantages. Given the positive results of the last few years, experts believe that Vietnamese brand products will make a breakthrough in 2011 with the mobile phone models more suitable to Vietnamese people’s taste and Vietnam’s technological progress.

Nguyen Quang Minh, Director of ABTel, the owner of Q-Mobile brand, said that in 2011, mobile phone products will be more diversified. Especially, Vietnamese enterprises will also conquer the medium and high class market segments by launching smart phones and tablet computers.

To date, two companies, Hanel and CMC have announced they will produce tablet computers. “CMC is waiting for a suitable time to launch tablet computers, and this will be part of CMC’s plan to expand its product range,” a representative of the corporation said.

According to Minh, the appearance of more Vietnamese mobile phone brands shows the rise of the product localization. “The competition between Vietnamese mobile phone brands and big international brands is the competition of the two schools, the market-oriented school and the school with the products made based on existing models,” he says.

“International brands are under a hard pressure to constantly upgrade their technology and creativeness,” he adds.

According to ABTel, the enterprise now holds 20 percent of the mobile phone market in Vietnam, second only to Nokia. ABTel has an ambitious plan to come closer to the No, 1 position.

However, a lot of Vietnamese customers still refuse to use Vietnamese brand phones, describing the products as “having Chinese body and Vietnamese soul”

Commenting on that, Nguyen Trung Chinh, General Director of CMC, the owner of Blue Phone brand, said that all the biggest mobile phone manufacturers outsource their production to China. Chinh said that Vietnamese enterprises should focus on designing and developing applications, and not spend money on developing production, as the domestic market is too small.

Sharing the same view, an expert from the Vietnam Electronic Enterprises’ Association, said that Vietnamese enterprises can get involved in the assembling process. However, it is very difficult to develop a mobile phone assembling industry because the market is too small, just several thousands products for every model. He said that enterprises need to make millions of products for every model to be able to make profit.

Vietnam’s mobile phone market remains very hot after it boomed several years ago. Vietnamese customers are keen to use the latest-generation products, including smart phones. This explains why the iPhone market has been scorching hot.

In related news, the prices of iPhone 4 have been escalating continuously in recent days after the exchange rate adjustment on February 12. According to VnExpress, the price has been increasing by 200,000 dong every day.

The newspaper quoted the owner of Hnam Mobile Shop, a mobile phone retailer, as saying that the price of a 32GB iPhone 4 on February 18 was 22 million dong, and 19.5 million dong for 16GB. Nam says that despite the price increases, the products are still selling well, and the supplies are running short.

Meanwhile, Dong, the owner of another shop, predicts that the sale price of 32GB iPhone4 will exceed 22 million dong, and remain high, even when iPhone 5 appears in May or June.

Source: VNN