Smartphones boost phone retail market
31/07/2012, 04:44:04 PM (GMT+7)
(SGT)-Smartphones will be the thrust for the mobile phone retail market as up to 42% of Vietnamese consumers say they want to use the high-tech product.
This is the result of a survey on smartphones of Nielsen which was conducted in over 39 countries in Asia and the Pacific, including Vietnam, with an aim to study the popularity of smartphones in this region.
Specifically, there are 70% of Vietnamese consumers using ordinary mobile phones, but 42% of them want to exchange for smartphones in the next six months.
Most of Vietnamese often ask friends, families and colleagues for advice before buying phones. Besides, 39% say they are attracted by phones displayed in shops, and 6% look for information about phones on leaflets.
The survey reveals that the use of smartphones has pushed up the use of mobile Internet, especially with social networks and search tools. Over the past months, nearly 62% of phone users in Vietnam use smartphones to surf the Internet while 23% log in social networks via smartphones.
Speaking of the mobile phone market, Nguyen Van Hoa, deputy general director of the retail chain Vien Thong A, said that smartphones would be the driving force for the market amid the decline in phone buying power since the year’s beginning.
According to Hoa, the market will become bustling with smartphone products in the medium segment with a price range from VND2.8 million to VND3.5 million. In addition, people with less than VND2 million can even buy a phone equipped with basic features of a smartphone.
Sharing the same opinion, Dinh Anh Huan, sales director of thegioididong.com, said that low-cost smartphones would boost the market as consumers still want to own new-technology products despite cutting spending.
Local phone producers have entered the low-cost smartphone segment, such as Touch S01 of Mobistar running on Android, equipped with 5.0 Megapixel camera and sold at under VND3 million, or the dual-SIM smartphone i5 worth VND4.25 million of Viettel and the smartphone F6 worth VND3 million of FPT.
