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Vietnamese people “addicted” to mobile phones
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VietNamNet Bridge – More and more Vietnamese become addicted to mobile phones, as the service providers continue to lower the fees and the prices of luxury phones with many entertainment functions are also decreasing.

Vietnamese people are faithful to mobile phones

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, it is estimated that Vietnam will import one billion dollar worth of mobile phones in 2010. The ministry believes that the mobile phone imports account for a big proportion of the total import value and this is one of the main reasons behind the high trade deficit. Therefore, it has been trying to restrict the imports, especially of luxury/expensive products.

Most recently, people in Hanoi, HCM City and Da Nang had to queue up in front of mobile phone distribution shops to purchase iPhone 4. A lot of people said they had to queue up from 5 am to be able to buy one.

Statistics showed that more than 10 million mobile phones were sold in 2009 in Vietnam. This means that one out of every eight Vietnamese people purchased a new phone. Experts have forecast that 12 million mobile phones would be sold in 2010, which means that one out of every seven people would purchase a new phone. Five years ago, no one could imagine that the number of mobile phone users would be so high.

Analysts say that Vietnamese people do not change their phones as frequently as people in Hong Kong, Taiwan or South Korea. However, the number of Vietnamese people using two or more mobile phones at the same time, or who buy new phones every six months or one year has been increasing significantly.

The lower the service fee, the bigger the number of mobile phone users

In the past, high fees were a big obstacle for mobile phone users. However, nowadays, with the stiff competition between the service providers, the fee has been decreasing sharply.

The current market is now controlled by three biggest service providers, Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone. Any move made by any one of them will have big impacts on the market.

For a long time, Viettel led the race of reducing service fee. However, since 2009, MobiFone and VinaPhone have joined in by continuously lowering their fees so as to ensure that theirs are always lower by 10 dong/minute than the fees offered by Viettel. After the latest fee reduction, the inner-network call charge set by MobiFone has reduced to 880 dong per minute (down by 10.24 percent), while the intra-network call charge has reduced to 980 dong per minute (down by 9.28 percent).

Most recently, Frost & Sullivan, the firm specializing in surveying telecom market, said that Vietnamese telecom companies are providing services at 4 cent per minute (800 dong), because there are too many ongoing promotion campaigns. Frost & Sullivan believes that the price war between the service providers will negatively impact Vietnam’s market, because the revenue growth will slow down, while service providers will not get enough money for re-investment. However, it is clear that the stiff competition of service providers will bring benefit to customers.

Thu Phuong - Buu dien