The “Vietnamese brand tablet” dream still far away 20/09/2012 08:34:00 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – After marketing Vietnamese brand mobile phones, Vietnamese enterprises now cherish the ambitious plan to conquer the market with Vietnamese brand tablets.

The pioneers

Hanel, a big electronics group and CMC Technology Group, a well-known information technology, were considered the pioneers in the field when both planned to implement the projects on making Vietnamese brand tablets for domestic sale.

Nguyen Phuoc Hai, General Director of CMS, a subsidiary of CMC Group, once said that the tablet production plan would be a priority task for CMS.

The former group planned to have its products hit the market in November 2010, while the latter scheduled to market its products in March 2011. However, no product has been launched the market so far, and it is highly possible that the projects have fallen into oblivion.

Analysts have every reason to think that CMC has given up the idea of making Vietnamese brand tablets. Mobile phones are believed to be “easier to make” products if compared with tablets. Meanwhile, in July 2012, CMC’s Board of Directors decided to halt the operation of CMC Blue France in its plan to cut down expenses. The decision was made after the two ineffective operation of the company.

While CMS gave up the idea when the tablet was still on… paper, Hanel’s tablet took shape already. However, even Hanel’s tablet has never appeared on the market. The salesmen of Hanel said they only heard about the product, while they did not see the product with their eyes.

The brave manufacturers

While Hanel and CMC decided to abandon the dream of Vietnamese brand tablets soon, other manufacturers seemed to be braver and continued their way. Pi Vietnam, FPT, Tri Nam have all launched their products to the market.

However, the products, after a period of struggling to survive, have been dislodged from the market, because they could not compete with foreign made products, though they had lower prices.

The Tri Nam Trade Company in March and April 2012 once shocked the public when reporting the sales of 10,000 BiPad 9s, priced at 1.98 million dong within the sale promotion program. The success of Tri Nam was explained by the reasonable business strategy, under which customers could not pay a deposit first and get products later, while the manufacturer promised the product warranty.

However, the next BiPads could not catch the attention of customers any more, including the ones who are interested in low cost products.

Prior to that, FPT also stirred up the public when stating that its first table products were sold out in the first sales campaign in October 2011, where 1000 products were consumed.

However, a lot of customers said that they could not see FPT’s tablet products on the shelves of supermarkets or high-tech product sale agents.

Meanwhile, Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam, which conducted a mini survey at supermarkets and sales agents, has found out that no one asked for the products, while no one heard about the tablet products made by FPT Group.

The far-away hope

Mai Phu Phong, Director of PhoneGee, who has been trading mobile phones and tablets for many years, said that Vietnamese brand mobile phones still can “live” for short periods on the market, while Vietnamese brand tablets nearly cannot exist.

Phong said customers nowadays would use used foreign made products which have nearly the same prices as brand new Vietnamese tablets, rather than buying the products with low quality.

(Compiled by C. V)