Vietnam’s Vingroup announced that it has signed a deal with Qualcomm and a unit of Fujitsu in an effort to manufacture 5G smartphones in Vietnam, according to media reports.
Vingroup is Vietnam’s biggest-listed firm by market value. The Vietnam company’s 5G smartphones under the brand Vsmart will be manufactured in Hanoi, where the factory is located. Media reports said that it plans to market these smartphones in the US and European markets next year.
Last year, the company had launched smartphones under the brand Vsmart. The company seeks to control a good portion of the market share largely dominated by tech giants including Apple and Samsung.
The company has started building a factory in Hanoi with a production capacity of 125 million units a year. According to media reports, the new factory will boost Vingroup’s current capacity of 5 million units at its Haiphong facility.
Vsmart phones use chips from Qualcomm and run on Google’s Android operating system. The 5G smartphones from Vietnam are to be sold at a price range between $145 and $282.
Vingroup CEO Nguyen Viet Quang said in the statement, “After a period of deploying and participating in the smartphone manufacturing industry, our products have been positively received by the market. We received many processing orders from major partners in Europe and the United States. That’s why we have invested in a factory with 25 times the capacity of our current factory in Haiphong, to meet with domestic and international demand.”
The company has already started selling its Vsmart phones in Spain and will soon expand into other European markets. Last month, the phones were on sale in Myanmar.