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Biz opportunity........

Vietnam’s market of applications for mobile phones attractive in foreigners’ eyes
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VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s market, with 50 million regular mobile phone subscribers, a developing 3G infrastructure , but a limited number of mobile phone applications, is gold mine for foreign companies.


The unexplored territory

According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, Vietnam now has 156.1 million phone subscribers, 90.32 percent of which are mobile phones (180.7 phones per 100 people). Vietnam has been listed among the markets with the highest growth rates in the world.

The market is predicted to develop significantly in the time to come, when Vietnam utilizes 3G technology on a large scale. MobiFone is now providing 60 different services based on mobile network, VinaPhone 50. However, the services are just basic services.

The mobile phone application market is considered a gold mine as Vietnam is trying to develop 3G technology, and the number of people using smartphones has been rapidly increasing. According to Vien Thong A, a distributor of mobile devices, smartphones have witnessed the most impressive growth rates in the last few years. 367,712 smartphones were consumed in 2009, representing a sharp increase of 434 percent in comparison with 2008. Meanwhile, the growth rate of popular mobile phones has dropped from 34 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2009.

Hoang Ngoc Diep, former General Director of Indochina Qualcomm, said that 3G technology in Vietnam has not been fully exploited and has not developed sustainably. “Digital content services remain very poor,” he said

Diep believes that Vietnam now needs more and more enterprises to join the mobile applications market, especially foreign companies which have significant experience in developing mobile applications integrated with e-commerce and e-government


Will foreign companies jump into the market?

Considered a gold mine, of course, Vietnam is catching the eyes of foreign companies.

In early November, Opera Software, a Norwegian company, organized a market survey tour to Vietnam. Rolf Assev, strategic director of Opera Software said that he was so surprised that Opera accounted for 70 percent of the mobile browser market in Vietnam especially because Opera Software has not had any advertisement campaigns in Vietnam.

“Vietnam is really a very attractive market that we must not miss,” he said

According to Opera Software, in Vietnam, 67 percent of people connecting to the internet with mobile devices are using Opera Mini browser, while 15 percent are using the Nokia’s browser.

On average, each person using Opera, uses 6MB of data and reads 237 websites a month, mostly news sites, domestic online newspapers, Google searches, entertainment clips on YouTube. Vietnam is now ranking the 7th among the top 10 countries that use Opera Mini.

Impressed by what they have found in Vietnam, the Norwegian company has decided to carry out commercial activities in Vietnam. The company said it will shake hands with mobile service providers in Vietnam including Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone to provide mobile applications, and soon localize products for local users.

Nguyen Huu Hanh, General Director of Yahoo! Vietnam also said the company is now keeping a keen eye on the market at a time when Vietnam is clearly trying to develop 3G technology.

According to Hanh, two years ago, when launching Yahoo! Mobile, there were only 250,000 users. One year later, the figure rose to 1.2 million, and by October 2009, when 3G network was launched, the services attracted 4.1 million users



Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon