Vietnam has made strong growth in mobile application downloads over the past years, ranking 4th globally with over 4 billion global downloads of applications released by Vietnamese developers, according to a report by DataAI & APPMagic.

Such achievement was announced at the event “Google Think Apps 2023: Build the Future” organized by Google in Vietnam’s southern business hub Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.

Vietnam has jumped from the world’s top 15 in 2019 to 4th recently with 4.2 billion downloads of apps developed by domestic developers, said the report, released by DataAI, a U.S.-based firm combining consumer and market data in a single platform powered by AI, and APPMagic, a powerful mobile market intelligence tool, also based in the U.S.   

Vietnam has grown 2.5 times faster than other countries in the world in terms of application and game development, according to the report.  

Last year, the revenue from In App Purchase (IAP) in applications developed by Vietnam increased by 20 percent in the context of global revenue in this segment decreased by 2 percent, Marc Woo, managing director of Google Vietnam, told the event.

Currently, 93 game and application development firms in Vietnam are possessing 171 apps, each of which has been placed in the top 10 weekly downloads rankings at least once on the Play Store. 

Notably, four app developers in Vietnam entered the Top 50 global companies with new applications surpassing 100 thousand downloads in 2022, including Falcon Global, ABI Global, Zego Global and Rocket Studio. 

Woo emphasized that Vietnam has changed and adapted faster than many other countries in the world, as its revenue for apps and games continues to grow while a downward trend has been recorded globally.

The Southeast Asian country has been emerging as a hub for leading developers from around the world, consolidating its status as a power in application development, he commented.

Woo also said Google is committed to continuing to support developers in Vietnam from creating the future, creating useful applications and games for society, as well as supporting the development of domestic programmers.

Despite their impressive achievements, Vietnamese developers are facing many challenges to overcome, said Emily Nguyen, head of sales for Google Ads - Gaming & Apps Vietnam.

These challenges include a loss of momentum in downloads, a slower growth in revenue from IAP, an increasing reduction of eCPM (estimated revenue received per thousand ad impressions), and a 5-percent decrease in user engagement (according to statistics by the end of the first half of 2023). 

Therefore, developers in Vietnam should apply advanced technologies such as AI to produce highly competitive products, strengthen updating market trends to find new opportunities in new markets, and improve product quality, Emily said.

She added that Google will help local developers to overcome the challenges facing them.

“We wish to promote the development of Vietnamese application firms and developers so that they can reach out and succeed in the international market,” Emily told the event. 

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