Can Vietnam be a world player in the international IT market?

Creativity is one of the factors leading to success in any field. Is Vietnam capable of creating world-class information technology (IT) products?  This is a concern of many businesses in the field as they face obstacles in developing products for the domestic market as well as the international market.

"Software development in Vietnam lacks infrastructure, platforms, autonomy and creativity. Software outsourcing or even creating application software cannot turn Vietnam into a dragon," says Ha Than, the Director of Lac Viet Corporation. This is one of the barriers that businesses face in developing IT products.

Small, fragmentary market

Only half a year ago, the name Flappy Bird flooded the world media, including major media outlets such as Forbes, CNN, CNET, Bloomberg, and The Verge, among others... Yet the joy for the emerging of a Vietnamese brand in the international market was short, as the app was later withdrawn.

The app created by Nguyen Ha Dong has now become a story of the past. The dream to bring information technology products of Vietnam to the world remains a dream.

The story of Flappy Bird evokes many thoughts. At least it raised the question, “When will Vietnam have world-class IT products?” After all, world-famous technological brands like Nokia and Samsung have originated from small countries.

Dr. Nguyen Huu Le, chairman of TMA, one of the leading software and IT service companies in Vietnam with over 1,200 employees, said Vietnamese IT products were similar to the most popular ones sold worldwide.

"This is also a direction. But if we only ape them, and do not make improvements to make them appropriate for the Vietnam market and add new innovative features, our competitiveness will not be high because customers will choose products made by famous brands," Le said.

Le said that Vietnam has also had a number of highly creative IT products but has not had many popular products that have been commercially successful. Therefore, businesses do not have capital to develop the products.

According to Le, the biggest obstacle in building brands in the domestic market is the ability to commercialize. The reason is that the domestic market is small and fragmented. Foreign markets are larger but they are also pickier, more rigorous. Therefore, Vietnamese enterprises will face difficulties in exploring the overseas market, building the brand and commercializing their products.

Ha Than, Director General of Lac Viet, which has many well-known "Made in Vietnam" software products, said that although Lac Viet has the most modern computing technology for innovation, its biggest difficulty is Vietnam’s inconsistent IT development orientation.

In addition, software piracy in Vietnam is also a major problem for Lac Viet. It is estimated that Lac Viet lost around $50 million for software piracy for its Lac Viet dictionary software since 1995, when the software was released.

Ha Than said: "Software development in Vietnam lacks legs (lack of infrastructure, platform), autonomy and creativity. Software outsourcing and even making application software cannot turn Vietnam into a dragon. Awareness of copyrights in Vietnam should go in a different direction. "

Which markets should Vietnam target?

Strategic Director of the FPT Corporation, Nguyen Huu Thai Hoa, said at a meeting that Vietnamese IT businesses were focused on outsourcing and asked which markets should Vietnam brands target?

Human factors and business environments also play an important role in creating IT products.

Nguyen Huu Le said the link between Vietnam’s resources with the resources of the world’s intellectual centers is still fragmented. Specifically, with the existing human potential, Vietnam can create good IT products if local firms can combine technical elements with the marketing - financial stage to build names for their products.

When expanding to foreign markets, Vietnamese enterprises need to be associated with domestic and foreign partners, especially with the creative intellectual centers of the world like Silicon Valley and Boston ... to understand the needs of the market, to create breakthrough innovation, to promote technology transfer and shorten the time-to-market of products.

General Director of CMC Group, Nguyen Trung Chinh, said that to become a creative enterprise, his group has to build a professional working environment, make each employee aware of and respect the value and significance of creativity, discipline and honesty.

In particular, businesses should have policies to encourage a good environment to facilitate any initiative and creativity, and develop systems to evaluate the creativity in order to measure accurately innovative values and contributions of creativity to corporate development.

Dr. Nguyen Huu Le said that, though Vietnamese IT products are good, the "Made in Vietnam" brand is too unfamiliar with foreign customers and we need more successful stories to make IT products from Vietnam become more familiar in international playground.

Vietnamnet/Lan Anh