Vietnam’s Messaging App Battle Just Got Hotter: Zalo Reaches 1 Million Users

More good news for VNG today – after announcing record sales revenues – as its Vietnam-oriented Zalo messaging app has reached one million users earlier this month.

That’s a particularly strong showing for an app that got out of beta just late last year to compete with serious foreign messaging app rivals who’ve been here for much longer. Line and KakaoTalk, which have both been marketing their apps strongly, including on TV, have hit one million users each. While Viber, a slightly different app that’s a bit more like Skype, has steadily grown beyond 3.5 million users.

The Zalo team has also hinted at a few cool features on the horizon – they tell us in less than a month – including making online calls, upgrading mobile chatrooms and giving Zalo’s microblogging and photo interface a redesign.

Of course, this market is still very nascent and much of the potential lies in smartphone users who have yet to make the transition over from SMS. With more than 20 million people using smartphones in Vietnam, this market is still largely untapped.

Two issues remain for all these competing social apps: who will win over the smartphones and minds of the Vietnamese consumer; and how will they partner up with local mobile telcos? That’s something Line is already working on. I certainly think Zalo – being a Vietnam-made product – is better equipped to understand consumer minds, and it’s possible that VNG will be able to make nice with Vietnamese telcos to offer BBM-like data packages for free messaging in the future.