Technology retail systems hope that the mobile phone market will rebound during the Lunar New Year (Tết) season after going through a difficult December.

Phone purchasing power drops in December

If in the beginning of October, the system of domestic technology retail chains had seen a sharp increase in revenue in the mobile phone segment thanks to the presence of the iPhone 15 series, then immediately after that purchasing power declined sharply, affecting revenue from late November to the end of last month.

Nguyễn Thế Kha, FPT Shop commercial director, told the Vietnamnet.vn online newspaper that except for the iPhone 15 series contributing the main revenue in October, smartphone lines of other phone companies are almost going sideways and decreased slightly, because major new product lines were launched previously such as Galaxy Z Fold5/Flip5 from Samsung or OPPO Reno10.

In particular, the mid-range price line is the segment most affected in the past period when purchasing power decreased twice as much as the high-end price segment.

The reason is that this is a group of customers with a large consumption volume while being most affected by unfavourable macro-economic developments and having to cut spending on unnecessary products.

High-end product lines are also affected, but not much because this customer group is much smaller in quantity than the mid-range price group.

A representative of Mobile World also said that compared to November, mobile phone revenue across the system dropped by 12 per cent in December this year.

Revenue in December is always higher than in November in previous years. However, this year due to the impact of the economic and employment crisis, every industry is negatively affected and mobile phone retail is not an exception.

Hope for Tết season

A Mobile World representative said that the market's hope will be placed in January and February this year.

As Tết nears, there will be many stimulus programmes such as discounts, besides, the trend of users changing to new phones will also increase.

However, although it is certain that revenue will grow and be better than in December, this representative cannot quantify how it will compare to previous years.

Phùng Phương, in charge of communications for Di Động Việt system, also said that, revenue in the month leading up to Tết would be positive as customers waited for promotions.

Currently, after launching promotions for the New Year, this system is also preparing promotions for the upcoming Lunar New Year.

Meanwhile, FPT Shop has also started implementing the Tết super sale programme, from December 28 last year to February 29 this year. Many mobile phone lines will have strong discounts and incentives. — VNS