Big Manufacturer Gets Out Of TV’s & Smartphones After Spruiking Business In OZ

Top Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup who have spent the last 18 months hawking their TV and smartphone manufacturing capability to Australian distributors of TV’s and smartphones has moved to quit the market.

The group that was seen as an alternate manufacturer to Chinese factories was unable to compete on price with their manufacturing operation seen as expensive.

Former Acer Marketing Manager Katherine Nguyen joined the business in Australia but has since been laid off by the Vietnamese Group who purchased General Motors Australian Research and Development Group.

The Group has confirmed that they will end development and production of smartphones and televisions amid lacklustre sales and few prospects for growth.

Vingroup gave no time frame for halting production but said tha the manufacturing equipment used for TV’s and smartphones will be repurposed to provide smart solution products for automobiles and households.

The company will honour warrantees and repairs for TVs and handsets already sold.

VinSmart, the subsidiary in charge of the doomed product lines, entered the smartphone business in 2018 and TVs the following year. The phones are made in Hanoi and elsewhere, with capacity totalling 125 million units a year.

US carrier AT&T was using the Company to produce smartphones.

Low prices were used in a bid to boost sales, company data shows.

But VinSmart held a roughly 10% share domestically in the first quarter of 2021, market research firm Canalys said, ranking fourth behind the likes of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Oppo of China. The company also exported smartphones to Russia, Myanmar and elsewhere.

VinSmart has provided no detailed sales figures for its five TV models, but it appears both smartphones and televisions underperformed expectations.

Vingroup has devoted the most resources to its automotive segment. The subsidiary VinFast plans to debut an electric vehicle in November. The unit also is exploring EV sales in the U.S. as well as building a plant there. However, auto sales in Vietnam stalled at roughly 30,000 units last year.

Net profit for the group fell 42% last year to 4.5 trillion dongs ($195 million). The core real estate business is performing well, but the withdrawal from smartphone and TV operations could spark concerns about the future of the automotive business.

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David Richards

David Richards has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A former Fleet Street journalist, he wrote the Award Winning Series on the Federated Ships Painters + Dockers Union for the Bulletin that led to a Royal Commission. He is also a Logie Winner for Outstanding Contribution To TV Journalism with a story called The Werribee Affair. In 1997, he built the largest Australian technology media company and prior to that the third largest PR company that became the foundation company for Ogilvy PR. Today he writes about technology and the impact on both business and consumers.