Smartphone manufacturers race to open stores in Vietnam

An Oppo store. — Photo oppo.com

HANOI (Vietnam News/Asia News Network): The trend of opening private stores that only sell one company's products is being revived after the pandemic.

Oppo has just opened its 15th store at a large shopping centre in Bình Tân District, Ho Chi Minh City. It is expected that it will open one more store in Hanoi and another in Bình Dương this month.

Oppo opened customer experience centres, as big brands like Apple and Samsung rush to open specialised stores that only sell their products.

At Oppo's experience stores, in addition to displaying products, the company also provides comfortable seating, support services for machine testing and software installation, machine cleaning and free screen protectors.

According to Oppo, the expansion of the service network is to help the company reach closer to its user community.

Samsung recently simultaneously opened six genuine authorised SamCenter stores, lifting the number of this brand's stores to 10 in HCM City and Hà Nội.

Samsung opened a SamCenter store in partnership with retailers, operated by retail partners.

This year, the company cooperated with a retailer to open an authorised MT Smart (HCM City) store. These stores are known as Samsung Premium Stores (SPS).

At the same time, the company with the number one smartphone market share in Việt Nam is still maintaining the previously opened Samsung Experience Store (SES) stores.

The trend of opening exclusive stores that only sell one company's products has gradually emerged since the end of last year, initiated by Apple.

The company partnered with retailers to open separate stores that only sell Apple products, called mono stores.

Shopdunk, a retail chain from Hanoi, pioneered opening stores of the same name, selling only Apple products. Currently, this system has 11 'mono stores' in the two largest cities in the country.

Right after ShopDunk's model, a big player in the industry, Mobile World, also jumped in and cooperated with Apple to open mono stores named TopZone. Up to now, TopZone has more than 32 stores within a short time.

Currently, Xiaomi has about four stores located in commercial centres. Speaking to ICT News online newspaper, the company revealed that it would open 20 more stores this year. These stores are all operated by partners.

Phạm Tuấn Anh, a representative of the ShopDunk chain, assessed that the mono stores would help users get an experience throughout the products, with more enthusiastic consultation by a team of well-trained staff.

"In addition, when entering specialised stores, customers will avoid the case of employees of other companies enticing," Anh told ICT news.

He also emphasised that specialised stores also helped the company listen to customer opinions better than when compared to mass retail channels.