Richest man of Vietnam Launched Smartphones: Vingroup

Vietnam’s one of the largest private corporation Vingroup launched 4 smartphones models in December 2018 and is ready to compete with various tech giants. These phones are considered to be first Vietnam made smart phones.

Vingroup was established in 1993 by young Vietnamese in Ukraine and was known as Technocom Group which operated in field of food and Great success with Mivina brand. It was amongst top 100 most powerful enterprises in Ukraine. In year 2000, Vingroup returned to Vietnam with aim to contribute in building the country. They are a well known name in Vietnam and operate in various industries like Real estate, retail and healthcare, among others.

Vingroup is owned by Pham Nhat Vuong, a billionaire who started his career selling dried noodles in Ukraine. According to Forbes his real time net worth is $6.7 billion

Nguyen Viet Quang, Vingroup’s vice chairman and CEO said they want to heavily invest in research and new technologies/techniques in order to make a prominent place of Vietnam in the World map.

Vingroup has built core business in real estate and retail sectors and have also branched out to include car manufacturing, gene decoding and now mobile phones.

The Company celebrated launch of Smart phone models in Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam last month. They unveiled four models of smartphones under brand name Vsmart. These phones will not only be available for domestic consumers but will also be sold overseas in markets like Russia and Spain. In home market, phones prices have already been set between 2.49 and 6.29 million dong ($107 to $270).

Company already has easy access to retail stores as they already have 1,200 supermarkets and convenience stores all over the country which would definitely benefit the brand and consumers by easy access and availability in market.

Partnership with other well known brands

TheC ompany has announced its partnership with Spanish smartphone maker BQ and holds 51% stake in the said organization. BQ is a Madrid-based company and follow similar strategy as Xiaomi, they sell the phones with high-end specs at extremely low prices.

They also revealed, they have entered into a patent licensing agreement with Qualcomm, an U.S.-based semiconductor and telecom equipment company. From a wider aspect, it is seen as a huge deal between the companies to bring New Technologies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI and will work together to develop more smartphones, 5G, IoT devices and autos.

Vingroup’s ambition is to help in growth of their country by identifying and investing for creation of industrial base and develop an ecosystem of electronics and smart devices. The biggest challenge for this Company is to make the product a success in the market and contribute to Vietnam’s GDP, which has been record as fast growing economic country in recent years.

Author: Ms. Deepika Sharma, Sr. Patent Associate at Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorneys. In case of any queries please contact/write back to us at [email protected].