The Hanoitimes - The ability to buy and sell goods and services via cell phones will become more popular in sales and marketing, says Department for E-Commerce head Tran Huu Linh.
With a growing demand in the mobile phone sector and the massive growth of the internet, the development of digital content on mobile devices has become of great interest to businesses.
Digital content is the likes of animation, audio, graphics and images and video.
Linh said at a Digital Content Summit in Hanoi this week that mobile devices were potential infrastructure to develop digital content, adding that by 2015 about 20% of Vietnam's population would be using 3G services and in the next two years, half of the population would access the internet daily.
Once trading or advertising products and services became applications on the internet, development opportunities via mobile phones would become more significant than ever.
Bui Truong Son, director of Felix Studios Software Joint Stock Company, said the number of mobile internet users would become larger than the number of personal computer users.
However, the issue of copyright for digital content on mobile phones had not yet been solved. As a result, a requirement to collect charges on "digital content business" from users was needed to ensure the rights of authors and to create a level playing field for online users.
Nguyen Hoa Binh, head of the communication service of the Vietnam e-Commerce Association (VECOM), emphasised that if businesses wanted to turn payments for digital content into reality they had to make it more easy and convenient for users.
In addition, mobile devices were now used to update the latest information about social, economic and entertainment issues. They were no longer only a communication device.
Binh noted that fee collection on copyright via mobile devices still faced barriers. It was mainly derived from the psychology of mobile users in Vietnam. Not everyone was ready to pay fees for digital content.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade was now considering a decree dealing with e-commerce-related violations that was expected to be published in June next year, Linh said.
Vietnam was seen as having one of the fastest growth rates of mobile subscribers in the world, with more than 120 million 2G and 3G mobile subscribers. The 3G charge would become more beneficial to consumers to help a large number people gain access to broadband internet.
Since early this year, the country had about 31 million internet users. Of this figure 88% had internet access from home, 28% from workplaces, 26% from public internet stations and nearly 30% from mobile devices.
The Vietnam Digital Communication Association calculates that by the end of this year there would be around 10 million 3G users in the country.
