Smartphone sales in Vietnam are forecast to increase 5 percent year on year to 21 percent of total mobile phone sales in 2012, said an expert.
Apple's iPhone 4s (L) and Samsung's Galaxy S III at a store
Smartphone sales accounted for 16 percent of total mobile phone sales last year, said John Stefanac, president of Qualcomm Asia-Pacific.
The Qualcomm representative also confirmed that smartphones are expected to make up 85 percent of mobile phones with 3G (mobile broadband internet) capabilities, and this trend will continue to increase in the coming years.
Globally, the number of 3G users will increase by 15 percent annually from now to 2016, said Stefanac. In the Southeast Asian region, the number of 3G users will increase by 498 percent by 2014.
The number of smartphone users in Vietnam is increasing, according to the Vietnam ICT White Paper.
The number of 3G subscribers in the country has reached 16 million, accounting for 12 percent of the total number of mobile subscribers in the country.
In 2011, Vietnam had 127.3 million mobile subscriptions, up 14 percent compared to 2010.
Rising demand
High consumer demand for smartphones and basic feature phones in Southeast Asia’s fast developing markets continue to drive buoyant performances in the mobile phone sector, according to market research firm GfK Asia.
In the last twelve month, sales of over 118 million units across the seven key markets in the region, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines, brought the total worth of the mobile phone sector to almost $13.7 billion, according to the firm’s latest figures.
However, it is the intensifying popularity of smartphones that is accounting for the larger proportion of the total mobile phone market worth.
GfK findings point to a greatly increased smartphone consumer purchase rate of 78 percent across the seven countries to now account for over 61 percent of the sector’s overall value in Southeast Asia.
“Feature phones still reign as the more prevalent mobile phone type used by consumers in the region’s emerging markets,” said Gerard Tan, Account Director for Digital Technology of GfK Asia.
“However, smartphone adoption is escalating at a rapid pace, with individual country’s growth rates reported in the range of 42 to 326 percent.”
Consumers in Southeast Asia spent some $8.75 billion on almost 29 million smartphones within the last 12 months, translating to 61 and 78 percent growth in volume and value.
Findings showed that smartphone growth in the region is driven primarily by the more affordable devices priced in the range of $100 to $200, which is currently dominating the market.
“However, with major manufacturers recently announcing their intentions to launch low-end smartphones priced below $100, the devices will be within the reach of an even larger pool of consumers and the market is expected to grow even faster when these models are made widely available,” said Tan.
“This move is likely to significantly expedite the surge in demand for smartphones in the region’s population that has yet to convert from feature phone, which we expect to see continued robust growth in for at least the next two years,” he added.
GfK is one of the world’s largest research companies, with more than 11,500 experts working to discover new insights into the way people live, think and shop, in over 100 markets, every day.
Grimmer outlook for local producers
Only four Vietnamese mobile phone brands may maintain operations by the end of 2012, according to a recent forecast by Thegioididong.com.
2009 and 2010 are considered to be the peak period of Vietnamese mobile phone manufacturers and Vietnamese brands, with about 40 percent market share.
However, the tide turned in 2011 when the local telephone market became fairly quiet, and since mid-2012 the domestic mobile phone market has faced problems from the difficult economic situation coupled with fierce competition from other foreign brands.
This forecast also quoted statistics of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and GfK, saying the import of mobile phones for the first half of August 2012 reached nearly 617,000 units, down 17.3 percent compared with same period last year.
