Vietnam’s smartphone market has seen a number of new names this year, besides Samsung, Oppo and Apple which have been dominant in the market for many years.

A vendor chatting on her smartphone. Smartphones are expected to rapidly
expand their coverage in Vietnam where the Government is eyeing to push up
digital transformation. (Photo: vtv.vn)

The new names include Vsmart, Realme, Vivo and Xiaomi.

Statistics from The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shop showed that the top 10 best-selling smartphones at these two leading smartphone retail chains from the beginning of this year included products by Vsmart, Realme, Vivo and Xiaomi, which rarely happened during the past five years when Samsung, Oppo and Apple took the top positions.

Six best-selling smartphones at The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shop in the first nine months of this year were Samsung A51, Vsmart Joy 3, Samsung A11, Oppo A31, Realme 5i and iPhone 7 Plus.

Both Vsmart Joy 3 and Realme 5i were in the best-sellers of The Gioi Di Dong and FPT while Vivo and Xiaomi were only in the list of the former.

Recent figures of the global technology market analytic firm Canalys showed the top five smartphone brands in Vietnam in the third quarter were Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vsmart and Vivo.

Samsung lead with a unit market share of 33%, a drop of 6% against the same period last year. Oppo came second with a market share of 15%, a fall of 21%, followed by Xiaomi with a share of 12% and 9% share for both Vsmart and Vivo.

Xiaomi expanded rapidly in the third quarter at the rate of 114% year-on-year and Vivo at the rate of 75%.

In Southeast Asia, the top smartphone brands in the third quarter were Samsung with a unit share of 20%, Vivo with 19%, Oppo with 18%, Xiaomi with 14% and Realme with 13%.

Samsung and Oppo saw decreases of 14% and 15% respectively in annual growth while Realme saw an increase by 113%, Xiaomi by 18% and Vivo by 37% in the regional market.

Adsota’s reports on Vietnam Digital Advertising earlier this year showed that 43.7 million out of the country’s population of 97.4 million, or 44.9%, used smartphones, putting Vietnam in the top 15 countries in terms of smartphone users in the world.

Smartphones were expected to rapidly expand their coverage in Vietnam where the Government was eyeing to push digital transformation.

Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung at the recent National Assembly Q&A session said that as smartphones were essential for digital transformation, the market will see the launch of cheap smartphones, at around VND600,000-700,000 each, to ensure that every Vietnamese citizen could afford one.

The ministry asked to expand the coverage of 3G, 4G and 5G to every corner of the country to ensure all people in mountainous, remote and isolated areas are able to access the internet.

The ministry also proposed to develop a project producing cheap smartphones in an effort to promote the use of smartphones for the country’s digital transformation.

From October, Viettel launched the Vsmart Bee Lite smartphone at a price of VND600,000 (instead of VND1.49 million) together with a three-month data package of 15GB per month.

Vsmart Bee Lite was a product of the cooperation between Viettel and VinSmart in an effort to ensure that everyone could afford smartphones and access digital utilities.