
Mobile revolution in Vietnam - hoare
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/vietnams-mobile-revolution-catapults-millions-into-the-digital-age-1434085300-lMyQjAxMTI1MjE2MjgxODI0Wj
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jstsch
I was in Vietnam in May for about a month, so some anecdotes:

I was amazed by the amount of iPhones there. It seemed to dominate in usage
over Android. I was expecting to see a lot of 80 USD ShenZhen Androids, but
no... either you have a dumb phone or an iPhone in Vietnam.

And iPhones are not just for the rich kids. People having about a dollar or
two of disposable income per day are using (second hand?) iPhone 5+ models. No
laptop, just a phone. I was traveling with my brother who still uses his
iPhone 4 with iOS6 which was drawing some laughs :)

Social media wise: the people I interacted with all used Facebook a lot. Both
Gmail and Yahoo for email. Twitter/Instagram, not so much. Snapchat was
unheard of. I expected WhatsApp to be popular, but not so much.

~~~
fit2rule
The iPhone would be a great "single computer" for all of those people .. if
only it were more open. I wonder if there are any Vietnamese hackers out there
in some village, trying to work out how to write their own apps for the
iPhone5 .. what a real pity that such devices, quite capable of supporting
their own developer/user/owner, have been neutered of the task.

~~~
comex
Now that (as of last week) you can get a certificate to compile apps for your
device from Xcode for free, it's totally possible. Someone would have to write
an app that bundles an IDE, clang, codesign, etc. Fetching that certificate
could be done directly by the app or through a proxy; this is the only sticky
part, because I'm not sure whether Apple would approve an App Store app that
uses undocumented web service or Xcode to do so, but the thing is, if Apple
doesn't like it, there is now the "nuclear option" of staying off the App
Store and having a web service that fetches said certificate, signs the IDE
itself with it, and sends it to you. And it may not be necessary to go that
far, perhaps depending on how much is being done on the client side versus the
server.

If you add a Bluetooth keyboard and a TV, an iPhone starts to seem like a
totally reasonable development platform...

Edit: By the way, if HTML dev (including local) suits one's needs, which for a
beginning programmer it well might, that's been possible for a while. C.f.
"Procoding".

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qhoc
There are some key enablers that they did right:

1\. Internet connection (Landline and 3G) is so cheap relative to income.
There is no locked in contract.

2\. Free wifi everywhere and all businesses have free wifi (coffee shop, pho,
book store,...)

3\. Huge number of iPhone are used devices. They can get it for cheap because
they are either stolen (in US) and hand carry to Vietnam.

4\. Most people have family in US that would buy the phone for them or bring
used ones back.

5\. iPhone have very high resale value. So they use it for awhile and resell
to get new ones. It's not that much of a big cost.

6\. Smart phone in Vietnam is like car in US. You gotta have one or otherwise,
you're considered poor!

The following is a lie (from the article):

>> A Vietnamese government agency forecasts the market for e-commerce will
generate revenue of $4 billion this year compared with $700 million in 2012.

There are high percentage of mobile users but they don't spend a lot. As a
matter of fact, most ecommerce revenue are cannibalizing from people who would
buy these things by driving a bike to the store anyways. Most shops do offer
delivery for free or small fee. Reason: it's like 2-3 miles trip max.
Everything is super close together.

Disclaimer: I am Vietnamese, spent most my life in Vietnam, tried to do
startup in Vietnam, failed to compete with Facebook when it started with only
1M users in Vietnam.

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melling
"Internet penetration has grown to 44% of the communist state’s 90 million
people from 12% a decade ago. Much of that is driven by smartphones, which are
used by more than a third of the population"

Basically, like cell phones brought voice to many who could skip landlines,
and the associated expensive infrastructure, smart Internet phones are bring
the web to people. Local businesses are taking advantage of this.

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Ankur84
I spent 2 months in Vietnam (HCMC) last Nov-Dec, and that was the first thing
that surprised me. Not the iPhone5s but everyone seemed to have an iPhone6,
and yep I couldn't figure out the economics, but that's the reality (thanks to
posts below the economics now make sense).

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SixSigma
> Men read news from a smartphone in downtown Hanoi, Vietnam, on Dec. 5.
> Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

TIL: Vietnamese have amazing eyesight

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epicmosquito
500

