Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Vietnam’s smartphone market hasseen a number of new names this year, besides Samsung, Oppo and Apple whichhave been dominant in the market for many years.

The new names include Vsmart, Realme, Vivo and Xiaomi.

Statistics from The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shop showed that thetop 10 best-selling smartphones at these two leading smartphone retail chainsfrom the beginning of this year included products by Vsmart, Realme, Vivo andXiaomi, which rarely happened during the past five years when Samsung, Oppo andApple took the top positions.

Six best-selling smartphones at The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shopin the first nine months of this year were Samsung A51, Vsmart Joy 3, SamsungA11, Oppo A31, Realme 5i and iPhone 7 Plus.

Both Vsmart Joy 3 and Realme 5i were in the best-sellers ofThe Gioi Di Dong and FPT while Vivo and Xiaomi were only in the list of theformer.

Recent figures of the global technology market analytic firmCanalys showed the top five smartphone brands in Vietnam in the third quarterwere Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vsmart and Vivo.

Samsung lead with a unit market share of 33 percent, a dropof six percent against the same period last year. Oppo came second with amarket share of 15 percent, a fall of 21 percent, followed by Xiaomi with ashare of 12 percent and nine percent share for both Vsmart and Vivo.

Xiaomi expanded rapidly in the third quarter at the rate of114 percent year-on-year and Vivo at the rate of 75 percent.

In Southeast Asia, the top smartphone brands in the thirdquarter were Samsung with a unit share of 20 percent, Vivo with 19 percent,Oppo with 18 percent, Xiaomi with 14 percent and Realme with 13 percent.

Samsung and Oppo saw decreases of 14 percent and 15 percentrespectively in annual growth while Realme saw an increase by 113 percent,Xiaomi by 18 percent and Vivo by 37 percent in the regional market.

Adsota’s reports on Vietnam Digital Advertising earlier thisyear showed that 43.7 million out of the country’s population of 97.4 million,or 44.9 percent, used smartphones, putting Vietnam in the top 15 countries interms of smartphone users in the world.

Smartphones were expected to rapidly expand their coverage inVietnam where the Government was eyeing to push digital transformation.

Minister of Information and Communication Nguyen Manh Hung atthe recent National Assembly Q&A session said that as smartphones wereessential for digital transformation, the market will see the launch of cheapsmartphones, at around 600,000-700,000 VND each, to ensure that every Vietnamesecitizen could afford one.

The ministry asked to expand the coverage of 3G, 4G and 5G toevery corner of the country to ensure all people in mountainous, remote andisolated areas are able to access the internet.

The ministry also proposed to develop a project producingcheap smartphones in an effort to promote the use of smartphones for thecountry’s digital transformation.

From October, Viettel launched the Vsmart Bee Lite smartphoneat a price of 600,000 VND (instead of 1.49 million VND) together with athree-month data package of 15GB per month.

Vsmart Bee Lite was a product of the cooperation betweenViettel and VinSmart in an effort to ensure that everyone could affordsmartphones and access digital utilities./.