Apple’s Vietnam market is ranking up?

Tram Ho

In the announcement of Apple’s latest financial report, Vietnam continued to be named by CEO Tim Cook as one of the markets with the most impressive growth rate. “We saw record revenue for the quarter ending June in both developed and emerging markets with very strong double-digit growth in Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam, nearly doubling sales. couple in India,” said CEO Tim Cook.

This is not the first time this CEO has talked about the Vietnamese market in recent years, showing that Vietnam is one of the attractive “pieces of cake” of the world’s largest technology company.

Used to be Apple’s “3rd class market”

In 2019, a representative of a retail system in Vietnam affirmed that “Apple considers Vietnam to be a third-class market, so there are some disadvantages such as slow selling machines, not diverse goods, and no priority market.” .

This is absolutely true because at that time, new iPhones often returned to Vietnam very slowly, about a month after officially sold in major markets. Products like the new MacBook or iPad are in a similar situation.

Thị trường Việt Nam của Apple đang thăng hạng? - Ảnh 1.
The Vietnamese market was not a priority on Apple’s list. Photo: ITI.

In fact, this is understandable because although Vietnamese people love Apple products, the market standards in Vietnam are still quite low. Firstly, the type of official airline (also known as hand-carried) is too common – even surpassing the sales of genuine machines. Second, the Apple product distribution agent system is still thin, without a methodical plan – which is very contrary to Apple’s principle of promoting perfection.

The moment that is considered as the “turning point” of the Vietnamese market comes in the period of 2019-2020. 2019 was the time when a famous mobile business system in Vietnam was searched and the owner was prosecuted for smuggling. After this incident, many business systems stopped selling unofficial products and promoted the business of genuine machines.

In 2020, another unexpected “hit” came to the “portable” business units when the Covid-19 epidemic broke out, making it almost impossible to import machines by unofficial way. A person who used to sell portable iPhones said that when the iPhone 12 was released, the number of laptops imported to Vietnam was only about 1/10 compared to before.

After this period, retail systems almost completely “turned around” with unofficial iPhones, and rebuilt the standard to become Apple’s authorized retail system (AAR – Apple Authorized Reseller). Some units have even built a series of mono store systems specializing in selling Apple products as well as expanding the Apple product warranty network on a large scale.

Vietnam market has “upgraded”?

Most recently, when the MacBook Air M2 was launched, the Vietnamese market welcomed the product about 13 days later than the international one, marking the earliest Vietnamese users could buy genuine Apple products.

Previously, when the iPhone 13 was launched, Vietnamese people only had to wait about a month for the device to officially open for sale, while with the iPhone 11, the waiting time was up to nearly 1 and a half months. It is likely that when the iPhone 14 opens for sale in the fall of this year, the waiting period will continue to shorten.

This is one of the signs that the Vietnamese market is becoming more and more important.

Thị trường Việt Nam của Apple đang thăng hạng? - Ảnh 2.
Monostore systems specializing in selling Apple products sprang up more and more. Photo: Thanh Duy.

Representatives of many retail systems confirmed that the Vietnamese market is receiving a lot more “favors” than before. For example, in the past, when selling Apple products, retailers had to be almost “self-sufficient” when organizing promotional programs when selling or reducing product prices, now they will coordinate closely. with Apple’s regional manager to organize programs in a systematic and uniform manner.

Not only that, the increasing number of Apple authorized stores means that users have easier and more accurate access to the premium experiences that Apple wants.

There are no exact statistics, but according to retailers, Vietnam is one of the few markets where Apple has continuously recorded double-digit sales growth. “With a population of 100 million people, Vietnam is certainly a large and potential market. The economic life of users is improving, which means that the demand to buy high-end Apple products only increases, not decreases. The Vietnamese market has a huge advantage and Apple certainly knows this,” said a longtime market watcher.

This person said that in the past, many people were surprised why Apple did not attach importance to the Vietnamese market while the potential was huge. However, the answer is emerging more and more clearly. The company has taken slow steps, gradually pushing the market up, not in a hurry. Therefore, the upward momentum of the Vietnamese market will certainly continue. “They step by step ‘kill’ portable goods, commit more to partners, give the necessary support at the right time when the market goes up. Those are very high moves by Apple”, this person identify.

Recently, there has been information about Apple considering opening an official retail store (Apple Store) in Vietnam. There is even information that there have been specialized Apple personnel coming to Vietnam and the store opening will be conducted soon. This information has not been confirmed but it is not a myth.

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Source : Genk