What opportunities for Mobile World’s TopZone chain?

On the evening of October 16, Mr. Doan Van Hieu Em, CEO of Mobile World Joint Stock Company, held a livestream to announce the opening of the TopZone chain specializing in selling Apple products.

On the upcoming October 22, on the day of the iPhone 13 Series opening in Vietnam, 4 TopZone stores will simultaneously open in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

According to the plan, TopZone includes 2 models: AAR (Apple Authorized Retailer) is the store located next to Mobile World or Dien May Xanh, APR (Apple Premium Retailer) is an independent store.

TopZone store is about to open in Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: Hai Dang)

Mr. Hieu Em expects the AAR model, with an area of ​​100-120 square meters, to bring in revenue of VND 2-3 billion/month. Meanwhile, APR store (180-220 square meters) earns about 8-10 billion VND/month.

By the first quarter of 2022, Mobile World is expected to open 50 AAR stores and 10 APR stores.

According to the head of the Mobile World chain, in Vietnam, there is no Apple Store or Apple Center model like some other countries, so this retailer opens TopZone to have a professional and luxurious shopping space for customers. .

In addition, TopZone opened to sell more products that had never been on the market before.

Opening a chain that only serves Apple users is the right direction, although the success of the TopZone model cannot be assessed at present.

Firstly, Apple is generating huge revenue so any retailer wants to take the biggest slice of the market. According to ICTnews data obtained from The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shop, iPhone occupies the top positions in the top 10 smartphones bringing in the highest revenue for these two retailers in the first 6 months of this year.

New statistics from Counterpoint Research in the first quarter of 2020 also show that Apple has revenue of the phone segment of $ 113 billion while the entire market is $ 270 billion. iPhone accounts for only 17% of shipments, but accounts for 42% of the global smartphone market’s revenue.

Due to the high selling price, so the revenue is large, iPhone is the source of life for many small stores and medium-sized chains in Vietnam today. Apple’s smartphone line, as mentioned, also contributes to the cash flow of large retail systems.

Secondly, not only generating great revenue, but iPhone is also the growth engine of the market in general and Mobile World in particular.

Since February 2020, the mobile retail chain of The Gioi Di Dong has started to decrease its growth compared to before. This chain only grows positively again from April 2021. According to the company, the mobile industry rebounded due to the contribution of the iPhone, including the iPhone 12 launched with many improvements.

iPhone 12 also contributed to the best-ever Digiworld distributor’s Q1/2021 revenue. The mobile segment contributed the largest revenue and grew by 148% due to the consumption during Tet holiday and the attraction of the new iPhone line.

Seeing clearly the contribution of the iPhone, Mobile World decided to open its own mining chain for Apple products.

Despite Apple playing such an important revenue role, the viability of TopZone still needs time to answer. Previously, APR and AAR models in Vietnam were quite successful with names like Future World, iCenter and some other stores.

However, these stores were quickly overwhelmed by The Gioi Di Dong and FPT Shop, attracting customers for two reasons.

Large stores display many goods, attract the majority of customers, so they generate higher revenue values ​​than selling only one firm. On the other hand, the two large retailers, because they generate high revenue, buy directly from Apple without going through a distributor, making the price cheaper and the source of goods more diverse. That makes small-scale stores that only sell Apple products at a disadvantage.

Currently, there are not many APR models in Vietnam, only FPT Retail’s F.Studio and eDigi are notable. But the above chains do not expand much, showing that exploiting the Apple user array alone is not an optimal solution. Meanwhile, the AAR model is applied in most of the medium-sized chains and above: combining Apple sales inside the smartphone stores of many other brands.

The Gioi Di Dong itself used to open a store that only sold products of the late CEO Steve Jobs, but then quickly removed it.

TopZone was born in a new context, a new era, so it will probably be more carefully taken care of by Mobile World. Whether this model is successfully extended or not must wait for the future to answer.