Feature: Smartphone shopping set to become big boom in Vietnam

Considering purchasing a new gas stove for her mother, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha grabbed her smartphone from next to her on the couch and started to compare prices at online stores.

Ha, 27, an office worker in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, told Xinhua that she usually buys things such as books, clothes, stationery, and household appliances online via her smartphone.

"With more and more apps available for online stores on my smartphone, it has become far easier for me to buy anything with just one touch," Ha said.

Thanks to the increasing popularity of smartphones and the availability of faster mobile network infrastructures, Ha can shop everywhere, be it at home, on the road, in her office, a cafe, or even while waiting for a bus.

"I don't have to deal with crowded streets or having to find a parking space for my motorbike, or having to navigate crowded stores and compare so many similar items. I just sit comfortably anywhere, open the app, search for whatever I want, read reviews and then decide what to buy," Ha said, adding that most of her friends, who are young, favor new technology and own credit cards, also love shopping on their smartphones.

"Shopping using smartphones will be an even bigger boom in Vietnam in the near future," Tran Huu Linh, head of the Vietnam E-commerce and Information Technology Agency (VECITA) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said recently in an article on the matter carried by local Bao Dau Tu (Vietnam Investment Review) online newspaper.

Linh attributed the potential to the fact that local consumers find it convenient and safe while shopping using mobile devices.

In late July 2015, local e-commerce store Sendo began the launch of its smartphone app. By the end of 2015, transactions made on smartphones accounted for some 45 percent of total online orders. The figure is expected to surpass 60 percent in 2016, reported Bao Dau Tu.

According to a VECITA report, in 2015, mobile phones were the most popular device to access the Internet in Vietnam, accounting for 85 percent of Internet users, up 20 percent compared to a year earlier.

Some 74 percent of online shoppers used mobile devices including smartphones and tablets to carry out shopping-related activities, including searching for products, reading reviews, and comparing prices.

Eyeing the trend of using smartphones for online shopping, many local companies have started to build mobile-friendly websites. According to VECITA, the number of companies with mobile versions of their websites had increased from 15 percent in 2014 to 21 percent in 2015.

According to Hoang Ngoc Yen, Google's representative in charge of strategic e-commerce customers in Vietnam, smartphones are making a remarkable contribution to developing e-commerce in Vietnam.

"Currently, online customers are interested in fashion, accessories, books, electronic and household products. Especially with fashion, the number of smartphone users searching for information stands at twice as many as that of computer users. Smartphones have become the main trend of current e-commerce, which has largely influenced the liquidity of the businesses involved." Endit