70% of Samsung smartphones made in Vietnam

Vietnam has emerged as the main manufacturing destination for South Korean smartphone maker Samsung as it accounts for a huge proportion of the modern handsets sold globally.

Tran Duy Dong, deputy chief of the Agency for Economic Management under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, told a press briefing on Tuesday that Samsung is doing market research to launch one to two more projects in Vietnam, each of which has a total registered capital of US$1 billion - $2 billion.

Dong also said 70 percent of Samsung smartphones on the global market are manufactured in their Vietnamese facility, based in northern Bac Ninh Province.

In March, the South Korean company, via its subsidiary Samsung Electronics Vietnam, broke ground on its second Vietnam facility -- a $2 billion handset devices and parts plant in Thai Nguyen, another northern province around 70km from Hanoi.

This is expected to be the South Korean company’s largest handset plant in the world. The Thai Nguyen plant is expected to produce more than 100 million mobile phones and 1 million digital cameras in the future.

It is included in a high-tech cluster, which is also home to a $1.2 billion chip making factory.

The complex is expected to generate tens of thousands jobs for locals, contribute tens of billions of US dollars to the country’s annual export turnover, and strengthen the development of the electronic support industry in the northern region of Vietnam.

Dong also said the four-year tax-free incentive Vietnamese government granted to Samsung will expire this year. The company is thus expected to pay some VND1.5 trillion, or $750 million, worth of corporate income tax this year.

Samsung had 80.35 million smartphones sold via global vendors in the third quarter of this year, earning it a 32.1 percent market share. Its archrivals Apple are placed second with 30.33 million units sold and a 12.1 percent market share.