Vietnam’s Vingroup planned to sell smartphones products around the world, once a real estate and retail focused conglomerate became Vietnam’s first fully-fledged domestic carmaker two months ago with a business called Vinfast.
First four Vsmart smartphones models. Source: Vingroup.
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“If Vinfast starts our industrial business, Vsmart is the starting point for Vingroup to develop an ecosystem of electronics and smart products,” Nguyen Viet Quang, Vingroup’s chief executive and vice chairman was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The firm wants to sell its smart phone and other smart products to all continents and has identified Russia and Spain, where it owns 51% of Spanish technology firm BQ, as potential markets in Europe, Reuters reported.
In Vietnam, which has a population of 95 million, Vingroup will be looking to win market share from Samsung and Apple with its new smartphones.
Vietnam is the largest smartphone production base for Samsung, while key Apple supplier Foxconn is also considering setting up a factory.
The four Vsmart phones launched on December 14 use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 435, 430 and 660 chips and Google’s Android operating system.
They will go on sale in Vietnam from Saturday with a price range of VND2.49-6.59 million (US$107.18-US$282.99).
Qualcomm and Vingroup’s technology unit Vinsmart also signed a multimode global patent license deal on December 14.
Tran Minh Trung, VinSmart’s chief executive, said at the launch that the group will not stop at smartphones and will gradually roll out other smart products.
Trung added that the group has launched six laboratories in the US, South Korea, Japan, China, Israel and Singapore to develop and research new technologies for smart products. In 2019, VinSmart is schedule to introduce 10 new smartphones models ranging from middle to high-end products.
