The time to buy cheap iPhones in Vietnam is over

(Dan Tri) - When iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 are out of stock in Vietnam, users can no longer find any genuine iPhone models priced under 15 million VND.

Every time a new iPhone line is launched, Apple will kill its predecessors to optimize production lines and device sales. However, the company maintains a different product strategy in the Vietnamese market.

For many years, Apple has maintained sales of older iPhone models in Vietnam to expand its popular customer base (Photo: PhoneArena).

Accordingly, Apple continues to sell older iPhone models by deeply reducing prices to reach users. The clearest evidence is that the iPhone 11 duo launched in 2019 and iPhone 12 launched in 2020 are still officially sold in Vietnam until mid-2025.

During those years, these two models were continuously adjusted in price and at one point reduced to about 10 million VND. According to shares from many agents, the above strategy has helped Apple achieve much success in Vietnam by expanding its customer base to the popular segment. Users can own a new iPhone at a lower cost.

However, the period when Vietnamese consumers can access iPhone models at affordable prices seems to be gradually closing. Recently, the iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 duo are gradually becoming scarce and disappearing from genuine store shelves.

Minh Tuan Mobile representative said that the supply of old product lines is increasingly limited because Apple has stopped production to focus on newer iPhone generations.

"This is considered a normal development in the company's product cycle. When supplies from Apple are no longer replenished, agents will gradually end the business of these models to shift focus to product lines that are being officially distributed," representative Minh Tuan Mobile shared.

The above change has unintentionally established a new iPhone price level on the market. Currently, users can no longer find any genuine iPhone models priced under 15 million VND.

The elimination of old models has made the threshold to own a phone in the Apple ecosystem significantly higher than before.

When iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 are out of stock, users can no longer find any genuine iPhone models priced under 15 million VND (Photo: PhoneArena).

Explaining this change, Ms. Van Thi Ngoc Yen, deputy product manager at Di Dong Viet, said this is part of the product portfolio management cycle that Apple has maintained for many years.

"When new generations are released with many upgrades, the company will gradually narrow the supply of older devices to focus on newer product lines. From a market perspective, this helps the product ecosystem be more synchronized," Ms. Yen commented.

When older models such as iPhone 13 or iPhone 14 leave store shelves, their position in the mid-range segment will be inherited by newer standard iPhone models.

"Their position will be replaced by newer iPhone models such as iPhone 15, iPhone 16e and iPhone 17e. These are all suitable options for customers who want to own genuine iPhones, with stable performance, long-term use but still balance the cost," Hoang Ha Mobile representative shared.