Vingroup -- Vietnam’s biggest listed firm by market value -- will soon launch its first smartphones this month.

Vingroup is like a "Vietnamese Samsung", operating 20 large subsidiaries from property to retail, and expanding into high technology.

Vingroup has recently purchased 51% of BQ, a tier-3 smartphone vendor headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

Vingroup says it can currently make 5 million devices a year at its Haiphong plant, in northeast Vietnam. BQ’s team are already helping in product development.

Vingroup will launch 4 smartphone models under the Vsmart brand. They will use Android software and Qualcomm hardware. For now, they will be mostly rebadged BQ models, sold in Vietnam, Spain, and eventually other parts of Asia and Europe.

Vingroup could cross-subsidize its mobile adventure from other profitable parts of the business (like retail) and it will be hoping to copy the relative success of competing top-20 Vietnamese smartphone brands, like Mobiistar and Mobell.

To achieve that, Vsmart will need to invest heavily in its brand, very heavily in device development, and even more heavily in a retail salesforce. If Vsmart cannot get its product on store-shelves, its local marketshare in Vietnam or Spain will never rise above a few percent at best.