Vietnam becomes tech hub in Southeast Asia: EETimes Asia

Students operate a robot at the Saigon Hi-tech Park Training Centre in Ho Chi Minh City

With its fast-growing tech industry and young, educated workforce, Vietnam is emerging as an innovation and technology hub in Southeast Asia, EETimes Asia has reported.

In a recent article, EETimes Asia said electronics production in Vietnam has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years and the ongoing US-China trade war has helped to intensify people’s interests, adding that Vietnam’s electronics market continues to grow, as does the next generation of fearless Vietnamese engineers.

One of the attractive prospects for multinational corporations (MNCs) looking to expand their presence in the region is the young and ambitious population, it said.

The article noted that Vietnam's population currently has a median age of 30 years and a recent Youth Development Index (YDI) found that 22.5 million (25 percent) of Vietnam’s population are aged 15-29 years.

EETimes Asia quoted Daphne Tien, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development of Asia-Pacific at Mouser Electronics, as saying that this young generation creates an exciting prospect for the future.

The new opportunities that are opening up for Mouser Electronics in Vietnam are not a result of the trade war, as some would expect, but due to the impact the Internet has had on the new generation of engineers, Daphne said.

She strongly believed that the young generation of engineers currently entering the market in Vietnam provides a great opportunity for online distributors. Mouser Electronics has a centralised warehouse based in Dallas, Texas, with millions of components and can handle both big and small orders.

Daphne explains that Mouser has found success working with startups as they do not pressure these companies to scale up their production, as other distributors might.

Despite the optimism, Vietnam remains a small domestic market, but this is forecast to change. Vietnam’s growth rate has increased at an average rate of 6.3 percent from 2000 until 2018, the article said

With the continued foreign direct investment from MNCs such as Samsung, LG and others, a middle-income class is starting to emerge and with them, opportunities, it added.