The words “niche markets” seem unfamiliar to the majority of Vietnamese people. However, niche markets are becoming the focus of mobile service providers, especially when there is not much room left in the general market to exploit.
“Niche markets” are defined as market segments, where service providers focus on a small number of clients who have specific demands.
On Valentines’ Day February 14, S-Fone launched a promotion for couples on mobile phones Combo Tinh Yeu (love) and Combo Hanh Phuc (happiness). both models can use two simcards at the same times and cost less than 700,000 dong. Besides, S-Fone also allows clients to make free calls to one registered S-Fone subscribers for six months.
The promotion began on February 10, 2011 and is scheduled to end on February 23.
Telecom experts have commented that the move is a part of S-Fone’s plan to focus on developing niche markets in 2011. In this case, the main clients are couples,
Developing niche market in 2011was to be expected, as the general market has become saturated. The number of mobile subscribers has reached about 150 million, nearly double the whole population.
In fact, S-Fone is not the pioneer in developing niche markets. Prior to that, VinaPhone and MobiFone, the two of the “big three”, and Vietnamobile have invested in niche markets.
In mid November 2010, MobiFone launched a promotion campaign for “little clients,” aged between five and nine, and senior clients. It seems that MobiFone is the first to offer a special program for children With just 790,000 dong, the children aged 5-9 will get a preferential network access kit Mobikid with pre-paid simcards and many other preferences for the next months.
The clients can choose between two kinds of mobile phones, either the one reserved for old people (S202) or children (Mobikid) and a pre-paid simcard with 590,000 dong. The clients will be given 16,500 dong a month (the sum of money will be added into the clients’ accounts) for the next 20 months. The subscribers can register four other MobiFone numbers in order to make calls at low charges of 640 dong per minute.
With Mobikid, in the first six months, clients can send 18 free inner-network messages a month. With the service package reserved for elderly people, they can increase the number of days of after activating simcards by 60 days. The call charges applied to the two service packages are 1480 dong per minute for the calls to other networks, and 1280 dong per minute for calls within the same network
Representative of the service provider said that elderly people and children have caught the provider’s attention because the demand from them is increasing.
MobiFone is offering the packages aimed at other groups of clients, such as M-Business M-Friendsand M-Home for family members.
Meanwhile, in an effort to attract young clients, teenagers or students, MobiFone has launched Q-Student and Q-Teen service packages and VinaPhone Talk Teen and Talk Student.
When talking about the business strategies for 2011, mobile service providers have announced that they will not focus on increasing the number of subscribers in 2011, but will pay attention to develop services and increase profit.
The fees have decreased to very low levels as the service providers have been slashing fees in order to attract more users.
Source: Vietnamnet