Vietnam’s mobile frontiers are only about games, can it grow beyond?

On my iPhone, my screen is full of apps. It includes Duolingo for learning German, Lift for keeping up with my good habits, Evernote for taking notes, Wunderlist for my to-do list, Pocket for all of my reading needs, and Allthecooks for new cooking recipes. My list goes on and on. From apps like Uber, which have full-fledged services behind them, to native apps for websites like Reddit, my personal phone runs the gamut of apps. In fact, I’ve only got one game on my phone, and it’s just because I’m sampling a new Vietnamese title.

But when you jump over to the Vietnamese App Store, as Vuong Quang Khai from VNG explained to me recently, it’s all games (with a few entertainment apps splattered in between). In other words, Vietnamese users are just not using mobile utilities. There aren’t any popular Vietnamese versions of the apps I’ve listed above. And this is bad news for the potential of mobile in Vietnam in the future. Or maybe it underlines bright new frontiers where mobile app developers could go?

Last week, we reported that Vietnam’s smartphone market is edging towards 33 million users in 2014. That number has been disputed, and by calculations from our sources in various mobile companies, a more real number may be around 22 million smartphone users in Vietnam. But no one disputes that the number of smartphone users by the end of 2015 will likely be over 40 million. For the market, this means that a growing minority of smartphone users will become increasingly more sophisticated. And this growing sophisticated userbase will have new needs.

But can Vietnamese mobile developers really make this transition from games to apps?

The problem arises when you have a massive community of mobile developers that are almost totally focused on games. The beauty of the gaming business model, for Vietnamese mobile devs, is that you can easily clone a game abroad, tweak its design, character, and ideas, and then get a quick viral or popular hit in a short period of time. The revenue model is usually obvious: advertising. Flappy Bird is the quintessential example of this.

No doubt, there are also games that have in-app purchases, but again, these are games that are more or less building off of present models. It plays to obvious things that the gaming market wants. Gamers like it, gamers play it, and consequently, gaming devs reap the brief rewards.

But the mentality for making apps is totally different. You have to create sticky and well designed applications that address problems that everyday users have. That requires more product and design thinking. And it may just be something that Vietnamese developers aren’t quite ready for yet.

In tandem with a product mindset is payment. In Vietnam, getting money from games is very straightforward: ads or in-app purchases. But for apps, it runs the gamut of subscription to paid apps to freemium models. These are not easy models for Vietnamese startups in a world where third-party payment services remain uncommon, and cash-on-delivery is the norm. This may be the single biggest barrier to mobile apps coming out of Vietnam.

Having said that, there is a precedent in Vietnam. Apps like Greengar, Not A Basement and Notes Plus are three studios from Vietnam that have actually made it work globally. So there are mentors that new mobile devs can look up to for inspiration. And 2015 is likely the year to take it more seriously, just before Vietnam’s smartphone userbase hits 50 percent of the total population.