“Communist Vietnam is suddenly Apple Inc’s hottest market after sales there tripled in its fiscal first half, a growth rate five times faster than in India where it is spending heavily in a battle for market share,” Nguyen Phuong Linh reports for Reuters. “Vietnam has barely received a mention from Apple executives in their regular briefings for financial analysts. But in a quarterly conference call on Wednesday, they were talking up the potential of the country. Quarterly iPhone sales more than doubled and the strong growth appears likely to continue given Vietnam’s predominantly young, tech-savvy population, rapid growth in internet and mobile phone use and a projected doubling of the middle class by 2020. Vietnamese tech firms are fast cropping up, churning out apps such as Flappy Bird, which rose from obscurity to become one of the world’s most downloaded mobile games.”
“Young Vietnamese thronging stores to buy iPhones worth up to half of their country’s 2012 gross per-capita income say it’s worth it,” Linh reports. “‘This cost more than two months worth of my salary,’ said officer worker Pham My Linh, 23, moments after agreeing a payment plan for an iPhone 5. ‘But I need it, to feel more confident when hanging out with friends and colleagues.'”
“The surge in demand comes against a backdrop of sluggish economic growth exacerbated by high levels of bad loans and business closures. The economy grew 5.4 percent last year, a rate economists see as underwhelming given Vietnam’s fast population growth and its retail and manufacturing potential. But Vietnamese smartphone sellers say a hunger for higher social status is driving Apple’s sales, helped by price cuts and payment plans that make it easier to digest handset prices that exceed the monthly income of most urbanites,” Linh reports. “Apple isn’t the only beneficiary of its own brand appeal. Fake iPhones with a near-flawless appearance are on sale for just 2 million dong ($95). ‘There are a lot of people out there who can’t afford an iPhone but still want to look rich, which is why shops like mine can do well,’ said shop owner Nguyen Duc Hai, 33.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David E.” for the heads up.]