Vietnam 2010 - A connected country

Last week, I had a trip to Can Tho to see the new bridge and nearby provinces include Vinh Long & Tra Vinh. This was the first time I was capable with an Android smartphone and a 3G connection. It has made my trip more fun :)

In the past, some long trips may took me up to 10 hours sitting in the bus doing nothing beyond looking at both sides on the road. But now, it does not last any longer. With a smartphone and 3G, I can play online games, looking at the map to see interesting places around me and searching for more related information. Technology really makes life easier in this situation!

I remember since the first time playing with the Internet, I never imagine that once day I can easily access Internet anywhere in Vietnam with just a handheld device. But in less than ten years, this has become reality. And it has enabled me to do much more thing, be able to access to a large amount of information on the Internet everywhere at anytime.

Then it made me think all Vietnamese now have a chance to access to Internet. So if they can utilize it, they can benefit much from a flat world nowadays no matter who they are, a peasant or just a worker. It turns out that education will be the key component for Vietnam in the next step, to reach the goal becoming a strong ICT country after it has become an Internet connected country.

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Go Mobile: The escape for local search engines?

Search engine is always one of the hottest trends in the Internet world. At China market, Baidu has defeated the giant Google to become the number one local search engine, and this has inspired some Vietnam competitors to do a similar thing, to grow up a "Baidu of Vietnam". However, they all meet many difficulties now, due to the tough competition from Google, as I mentioned in past articles [1], [2]. But with the launch of local 3G, will there be any changes?

Let's take a look at what 3G can shape our future. In recent days, I have been trying Mobifone 3G. It takes about 8.000VND for unlimited 1 day usage, 16.500VND for 3 days and 137.500VND for one month, you can find out more here. With one day unlimited usage, I could download hundreds of songs to my mobile phone, much better than the normal SMS download often take 15.000VND/SMS, not include the fee you have to pay for the GPRS data downloaded. So definitely, this will be the trend of future, when local mobile users become more intelligent and 3G connectivity becomes immensely popular soon.

So, what will be the most important tool to a local mobile user? I think mostly the search engine, since Vietnamese users are fond of downloading music, photo to their mobile. A good search engine will be the main gate to access to the mobile Internet entertainment world. As a result, all local search engines are now moving toward this 

Xalo.vn (http://m.xalo.vn) The company is now offering 10 services, some are free and some are not. For paid services, Xalo.vn require user to pay via SMS, by sending a SMS cost 15.000VND for 3 months subscription) 

Socbay.com (http://m.socbay.com/) The company is now offering 5 search services: Music, Photo, Local, Dictionary, Ads. The company also collaborate with Mobifone, to launch the common mobile search portal http://msearch.vn. Besides mobile web version, the company also has a J2ME version to run on normal mobile phones.

Google.com (http://www.google.com.vn) Google Mobile now offers a wide range of search via the mobile interface. However, they are still not popular as Google Web Search, and lacking music search is definitely a big disadvantage of Google. 

So if local competitors can run fast, I think they may achieve many advantages against Google. It is quite hard to believe, but remember that most of local users are now using mobile just for listening music, downloading photo, reading newspaper. A small program with some basic features would be good enough, especially if local search engines work together with mobile service providers like Viettel, Mobifone, Vinaphone... to deploy the app to end-users, then they will create some difficulties for the giant Google. So look forward to seeing the next local search war on mobile :)

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How much are Vietnam IT companies?

Have you ever wondered how much are Vietnam IT companies? To me, I am really interested in this and often watch the market value of international giants via Google Finance. However, many local companies are still not on stock market, so I often find out by basing on the similarity to other foreign ones. Let take a look at some outstanding IT companies at the beginning of 2010 

1. Viettel:  The net income in 2009 is 10.000 billion VND ~ $540 million, the P/E (got from China Mobile) 11.83. So the market value of Viettel is estimated at $6.394 billion. So if they can reach their goal $15 billion revenue in 2015, the market value of the company will reach $25~30 billion and Viettel may become the largest company in Vietnam at that time. 

2. FPT: No need to calculate :), just look at the stock market. The market value of FPT is now $610 million 

3. CMC: The revenue and income is about 1/5 of FPT. So the market value of CMC may range from $120-$150 million 

4. Vinagame: Some people speculate the net income of Vinagame in 2009 is 500 billion VND ~ $27 million, the P/E 17.15 (got from Kingsoft, 53.29 if got from Tencent), so the market value of Vinagame is about $463 million 

5. MISA: The net income 2009 is 17 billion VND ~ $0.918 million, the P/E is ~20, so the market value of MISA is about $18.36 million 

6. Lac Viet: The net income 2009 is 9 billion VND ~ $0.486 million, the P/E is ~15, so the market value of Lac Viet is about $7.29 million 

7. Dot-com companies: According to my information, the investment from VC to these companies range from $0.1 - 2 million USD for 30% of the company. So the market value of these will range from $0.3 - 6 million.

Some conclusion from above statistic

- Telecom companies like Viettel, VNPT are the biggest players. Then to some companies FPT, CMC... which has a good distribution system, outsourcing, information systems... Then to the medium ones like MISA, LacViet... Then to smaller ones include dot-com companies

- The fast growing of young online companies is a big surprise. It just takes Vinagame 5 years to equally reach the value of FPT in more than 20 years, for some other dot-coms 3 years to reach the value of old ones like Lac Viet, Misa... So I think the trend of online services and softwares will become popular in upcoming years, as it has much potention compared to others. 

- With the strong ambition of government to develop Vietnam into a strong ICT country, it will contribute to make this industry explode, i.e more companies, more revenue, more opportunites for IT developers...

So if you are a local developer, you may now have many chances to become a millionaire in the future ;)). Of course, building a giant like FPT, CMC... may be impossible to you, but a smaller one under $10 million would be possible. Everything you need is just a good understanding about the market to capture the opportunity, and a strong tech team to turn ideas into products. Then try to stick to other giants like Viettel, VNPT, FPT... those will provide you with all remaining things. But that's just my thought, do you think so ^_^

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