FPT aims to join the world’s top 500 technological businesses

FPT has recently announced the appointment of a chief technology officer (CTO) for the economic group. Truong Gia Binh, FPT’s President, said on FPT’s internal publication that a CTO is very necessary for FPT, because technology would be the focus of FPT Group’s development, and the CTO post would be the foundation for the successful implementation of the OneFPT strategy.

Binh emphasized that it’s not important if the CTO would be from FPT group or from outside, but the CTO must be the leading expert in his field. The CTO’s duty is to build up the technological capability for FPT Group, including the staff. CTO has the responsibility of assisting the Chief Executive Officer and President to draw up the technology development strategy of the group.

Nguyen Lam Phuong, the newly appointed CTO of FPT, said that the thing he would have to do is to build up a development strategy that fits the conditions and capability of FPT and of Vietnamese people.

In the immediate time, as FPT has announced, it would invest 5 percent of the pretax profit on the R&D to churn out technological products.

“FPT needs to technologically lead in Vietnam and it also has to reach out to the region and the world,” he said.
“The CTO’s task for the immediate time is to build up a technological fundamental for FPT, so that FPT can churn out the first market-leading information technology in two or three years,” Phuong continued.

In the long term, the OneFPT strategy of the economic group has set up a task that FPT would list itself among the leading 500 technological businesses in the world.

Viettel and its big ambitions

Being a telecom service provider, but Viettel has been cherishing the ambition of jumping into the technology sector. Tong Viet Trung, Deputy General Director of Viettel, said the group has kicked off a progress of shifting from a service group into a service-technology group, thus adding “Vietnam” into the list of the countries whose names are shown on the world’s technology map.

Viettel has announced that it would reserve 10 percent of profit for R&D activities. In 2012, Viettel budgets 2 trillion dong to the activities.

If Viettel succeeds with its strategy, it would become one of rare conglomerates in the world which both provide services and manufacture telecommunication devices.

Nguyen Manh Hung, Deputy General Director of Viettel said that he can see the great opportunities for Vietnam now, in the first 50 years of the 21st century, when the core technologies have existed.

“The important matter now is seeking markets, and we will have to think of technologies later. Viettel would begin making core technologies after 20 or 30 years more,” Hung said.

Smaller companies also stay ambitious

Two years ago, Nguyen Quang Minh, Director of An Binh Company, stated that An Binh was controlling the most important parts in the value chain of a mobile phone: the designing, integration and commercialization.

According to Minh, in the value chain of hi-tech products, 40 percent of the value would belong to technology owners, designer and integrators. Meanwhile, the commercialization gets 40 percent and the remaining 20 percent for producers.
CMC is also planning to make mobile phones and tablets. Nguyen Phuoc Hai, CMC’s Deputy General Director has affirmed CMC would market smart phones, tablets and GPS devices in the near future.

Source: Buu dien