A few years ago, owning a digital personal music player (commonly known as an MP3 player) was not easy and required spending at least several million VND. However, the prices of these devices have surprisingly dropped.
In the digital equipment retail sector, counterfeit products have emerged, predominantly in the realm of personal entertainment…
A Variety of Big Names
Just mentioning the names of these giants, everyone recognizes them as major global players such as Sony, Sanyo, Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba (consumer electronics, digital), Nokia (mobile phones), Dell (computers), and Creative (graphics cards for computers)…
Among these names, there are companies currently producing digital items, primarily MP3 music players and personal video players (commonly referred to as MP4 players) like Samsung, Sony, and Creative. Their products are considered high-end due to sound quality, performance, and warranty standards, typically priced at several million VND or more.
Other big brands, as per our research, do not manufacture music or video players but their names are rampant on MP3 and MP4 products found in stores and supermarkets to the extent that when customers ask for an “MP3 Nokia,” sellers immediately understand they want an MP3 player “manufactured by Nokia”!
A sales manager at a computer equipment company in Ho Chi Minh City admitted: They use these brand names to give customers the impression that the market is rich in brands and diverse in product types… More importantly, it satisfies the customer’s desire to buy “genuine” products.
Flooded with Counterfeits!
There was a time when Sony Vietnam was “frustrated” because their brand was being exploited on digital products, mainly MP3 players. Although the designs differ, the advantage of counterfeit products is their extremely low prices: a 128MB version costs only 500,000 – 600,000 VND depending on the store, with “brands” like Sony and Sunny clearly labeled as Sony! Meanwhile, genuine Sony products of that capacity are priced around 2.6 million VND.
After authorities intervened, Sony-branded counterfeit MP3 products no longer appeared in major supermarket aisles, replaced by well-known brands like Nokia, Dell, Toshiba, and Sanyo… at surprisingly low prices: a Sanyo MP3 player with 128MB capacity featuring six functions—MP3 playback, voice recording, data storage—costs only about 700,000 VND; a 256MB Nano MP4 (manufactured in China but styled like Apple’s iPod) for video playback is priced at just 1 million VND; Panasonic’s 256MB MP4 is priced at 1.675 million VND; and Nokia’s 256MB MP4 is priced at 1.228 million VND…
There are even counterfeit products with upgraded features that even the official manufacturers did not anticipate: the “copy” versions of Creative MP3 and MP4 come with a 2-megapixel camera, while the genuine Creative products do not include a camera! These counterfeit items are readily available in any computer supermarket, ready to meet the demands of discerning customers.
It’s not difficult to recognize the difference between counterfeit and genuine products in terms of price! Explaining the pricing of Sony digital products, Vu Quoc Tuan, the external relations manager at Sony Vietnam, stated: “The main reason is the high import tax on these products! Since there is no assembly line, Sony’s MP3 players must be imported completely with a tax rate of 50%. Given such a high import tax, it’s understandable that the prices are high.”
On the other hand, while Samsung’s brand hasn’t been inundated with counterfeits like Sony, many buyers have been misled into thinking they were purchasing “genuine” products when in fact they were from a “cooperative” located far away in China.
Although the craftsmanship of these “cooperatives” may appear to be of “pro” quality (at a glance, and without guidance from the seller, it is difficult to distinguish between fake and genuine products), there are still many points of differentiation. According to the experience of one seller: genuine Samsung products always use the MP4 format to convert files, while the counterfeit Samsung devices employ the DMV format.
Additionally, in counterfeit products, components such as USB ports, speakers, and buttons are prone to fall off or are unstable; the power supply often fails, and the software frequently has bugs… The interface of counterfeit software often has blurry, small text. For those who have used counterfeit products, it is nearly impossible to find their website, and even if they do, there may be no model listed for firmware upgrades (the control software) and driver installation on computers running Windows 98.
The prevalence of counterfeit music players is increasing as they target low-income consumers. Though they are indeed cheaper, one must be wary of “spending money to receive a headache”…
THIEN VU
