Xiaomi launches new budget phone a week earlier in Vietnam

Xiaomi’s budget device Poco C40 has hit the street in Vietnam’s red-hot phone market a week before its global launch on June 16.

Chinese phone maker Xiaomi has made Poco C40 available in the Vietnamese market for VND3.49 million ($151), with a single RAM option - 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage. The phone is powered by the JR510 chipset, made by Shanghai-based semiconductor company JLQ Technology.

The Southeast Asian economy, which has emerged as a preferred manufacturing destination for global tech giants and is seen as an alternative to Chinese manufacturing hubs, is in the spotlight again as Apple is for the first time moving part of its iPad manufacturing out of China, taking it to factories in Vietnam. At present, around 60% of Samsung’s smartphones are made in Vietnam.

International Data Corporation (IDC) expects 25% growth this year for the Vietnamese smartphone market, the highest in Southeast Asia, as smartphone adoption is gaining pace.

Vietnam’s smartphone sales grew 11.9% to 15.9 million units in 2021, according to IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report this March. This was driven by 4G phones, following a ban on the imports of 2G and 3G mobile phones from July last year, as well as high pent-up demand in the fourth quarter of the year following pandemic lockdowns in the second and third quarters.

Vendors in the tech-savvy market, home to almost 100 million people, sold a total of 5.1 million units in the fourth quarter last year, up 107.3% quarter-on-quarter and 31.6% year on-year, as authorities commenced a step-by-step approach to restore social and economic activities, the report said.

In terms of market share, Samsung held 28.7% in that fourth quarter, followed by Oppo with 17.3%, Vivo with 16.1%. Apple was the fourth position in the period, accounting for 10.6%, according to IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Xiaomi ended the quarter in a statistical tie with Apple for fourth position.