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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 e

by jstsch 11y ago

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.

christoph 11y ago
Quite possibly a large number of the iPhones are stolen. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/102918/vietnam--the-biggest-consumer-of-stolen-iphones-.html http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/102918/vietnam--... Also, a interesting take on it is this - http://asiaplus.tumblr.com/post/105154935858/how-vietnamese-get-iphone-from-their-400-month http://asiaplus.tumblr.com/post/105154935858/how-vietnamese-...
digi_owl 11y ago
I suspect it is the fashion angle. Supposedly people with little disposable income will use that on clothes, cars or anything else that others will see. This in some reflexive attempt at giving themselves a measure of "class". I wish i could relocate the source of the anecdote, as it was interesting not just in relation to fashion and copying but also in the social interactions. Basically a young lady had landed a job, and went out shopping to celebrate her paycheck. She finds a market vendor with a display of handbags, and starts haggling. This by demonstrating how much she knows about the brands "on display" by pointing out flaws in the copies being offered. Then the vendor would excuse himself, bring another copy from the back room, and they would start over. This until the lady had gotten a bag of a level of quality she could afford. Thing is, she knew it was a copy, she knew it would not last as long as the real deal, but she considered it a holdover until she had climbed the corporate ladder high enough to actually afford a real model. In essence it came down to giving a social signal that she was a person that was "going places".
santoriv 11y ago
I live in Vietnam. Facebook is extremely popular. Small businesses generally just create a facebook website instead of regular website. Zalo and Viber are also very popular. Apple is an insanely popular brand - although not very many people have Macbooks. You see their logo plastered everywhere. The funniest place I've seen it is the cutout of the lamp shades in a local pizza restaurant. I've been pretty amazed at how willing people are to spend essentially all their disposable income (and then some) on cell phones. New cell phones are more expensive here than in the US because they are taxed (although you don't get chained to an absurdly expensive plan with a company). I think a big contributor to the popularity of smart phones is the camera. Every new location is a photo opportunity and every new photo must go up on Facebook.......
bruceb 11y ago
There are lots of stolen iphones. Ho Chi Minh has lots of thefts. Both locals and tourist get victimized.
fit2rule 11y ago
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.
- tim333 11y ago
  >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 .. After the success of Flappy Bird, written by a guy in Hanoi, I think a lot of them are at it.
- comex 11y ago
  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".

by jstsch 11y ago

christoph 11y ago

Quite possibly a large number of the iPhones are stolen. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/102918/vietnam--the-biggest-consumer-of-stolen-iphones-.html http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/102918/vietnam--... Also, a interesting take on it is this - http://asiaplus.tumblr.com/post/105154935858/how-vietnamese-get-iphone-from-their-400-month http://asiaplus.tumblr.com/post/105154935858/how-vietnamese-...

digi_owl 11y ago

I suspect it is the fashion angle. Supposedly people with little disposable income will use that on clothes, cars or anything else that others will see. This in some reflexive attempt at giving themselves a measure of "class". I wish i could relocate the source of the anecdote, as it was interesting not just in relation to fashion and copying but also in the social interactions. Basically a young lady had landed a job, and went out shopping to celebrate her paycheck. She finds a market vendor with a display of handbags, and starts haggling. This by demonstrating how much she knows about the brands "on display" by pointing out flaws in the copies being offered. Then the vendor would excuse himself, bring another copy from the back room, and they would start over. This until the lady had gotten a bag of a level of quality she could afford. Thing is, she knew it was a copy, she knew it would not last as long as the real deal, but she considered it a holdover until she had climbed the corporate ladder high enough to actually afford a real model. In essence it came down to giving a social signal that she was a person that was "going places".

santoriv 11y ago

I live in Vietnam. Facebook is extremely popular. Small businesses generally just create a facebook website instead of regular website. Zalo and Viber are also very popular. Apple is an insanely popular brand - although not very many people have Macbooks. You see their logo plastered everywhere. The funniest place I've seen it is the cutout of the lamp shades in a local pizza restaurant. I've been pretty amazed at how willing people are to spend essentially all their disposable income (and then some) on cell phones. New cell phones are more expensive here than in the US because they are taxed (although you don't get chained to an absurdly expensive plan with a company). I think a big contributor to the popularity of smart phones is the camera. Every new location is a photo opportunity and every new photo must go up on Facebook.......

bruceb 11y ago

There are lots of stolen iphones. Ho Chi Minh has lots of thefts. Both locals and tourist get victimized.

fit2rule 11y ago

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.

tim333 11y ago
>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 .. After the success of Flappy Bird, written by a guy in Hanoi, I think a lot of them are at it.
comex 11y ago
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".