While the information that Chinese Baidu lands in Vietnam has stirred up the young members of the Vietnamese Internet community, content digital firms, which are the rivals of Baidu, remain unruffled.
The projects carried out by Baidu in Vietnam are the ones in searching and social networks – the fields that are witnessing a very fierce competition in the domestic market.

Phan Anh Tuan, Director of Go.vn network run by VTC Online, said Vietnamese users set specific requirements that not every social network can satisfy. It took big foreign social networks like Facebook and Google+, or purely Vietnamese networks like Go.vn, a lot of time to find their ways to conquer the hearts of Vietnamese users.

Tuan said that Go.vn would continue pushing up local services, especially in education – the backbone in its strategy drawn up from the outset.

“I believe that the presence of Baidu in Vietnam would not have overly big impacts on digital content firms,” Tuan said.

Ho Minh Duc, General Deputy Director of Naiscorp, which is providing searching service like Baidu, also keeps calm when hearing about the presence of Baidu in Vietnam. He said that all businesses need to be ready to every competition; no matter the rival is Baidu or anyone else.

He said that the presence of Baidu or any other companies in the market has been anticipated, and if Vietnamese businesses can take full advantage of their strength, they would still be able to exist and develop. Naiscrorp knows Baidu well and it does not have any worry about the presence of the Chinese rival.

Le Hong Minh, General Director of VNG said the presence of Baidu in Vietnam, like any other foreign companies, would certainly have impacts on the Vietnamese market, both positive and negative impacts.

Minh said that the stiffer competition on the market would always bring benefits to consumers. Nevertheless, it would also put a hard pressure on domestic companies. Especially, it may make the workforce problems more serious, because more companies would hunt for the limited number of talented personnel.

Vietnamese businesses still need support

Though believing that Vietnamese digital content firms would still stay safe from Baidu’s penetration, the firms still have called for the support in the rival with foreign firms.

Minh from VNG said that Vietnamese firms have their disadvantages with limited power. Meanwhile, Internet/digital content, in general, unlike other industries, is the sector which is not protected from foreign rivals with the national policies. Therefore, Vietnamese businesses would have to struggle to survive in the home market.

Therefore, he said, domestic firms need the support from the public, the state and the press.

Duc from Naiscrorp also said that Vietnamese firms would have to compete not only with Chinese Baidu, but with South Korean Naver, which is thought to enter Vietnam in the near future, and many other foreign giants as well.

He said Vietnamese users would not care about if the service providers are foreign or Vietnamese. They would simply choose suitable service providers depending on the convenience and the utilities the service providers can bring to them.

However, he also said that the support in policies and other fields from the State would be very useful to businesses which help them become stronger to be ready for any competition.

Source: Vietnamnet