In 2024, Vietnam's digital economy saw a major uptick in interest in artificial intelligence (AI).

Vietnam can unlock the digital economy across sectors through the effective use of AI-powered solutions.

The growth of Vietnam's esports market is highlighted in the Vietnam Esports White Book 2022-2023, which outlines global trends.

An illustration of a new optic fiber network laid by Asian telecom firms and Facebook.

The Hanoitimes - Thai communications conglomerate True Corporation was considering investing in a communications project in Vietnam in 2015, Bangkok Post reported.The newspaper said Thailand's third largest mobile operator would come to Vietnam after the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (EAC), which is expected to be officially established in 2015.According to Bangkok Post, True Corporation plans to become an integrated telecoms services provider in Vietnam by seeking a communications infrastructure and network license.Established in 1990, the company is also a large cable TV provider and internet service provider in Thailand. Its services are also available in Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia.There is fierce competition in Vietnam's telecoms market, and there have already been a number of casualties.While Russian telecoms giant Beeline had to withdraw in April, Vietnammobile is seeking a Government bailout.SFone last month made most of its employees redundant in order to end its Business Co-operation Contract (BCC) mechanism and change to a limited liability company.The Vietnamese telecoms market, which has 135 million phone subscriptions, is dominated by VinaPhone, MobiFone, and Viettel, which hold a combined 95 per cent market share, while Beeline, Vietnamobile, and S-Fone share a minuscule 5 per cent.

Defeat in a bitter patent wrangle with Apple Inc, its smartphone rival and biggest customer, will dent Samsung Electronics Co's $21 billion cash-pile, but could actually help cement its leadership in the global smartphone market.

An International Conference o­n Microchip Technology got underway in HCM City o­n August 23-24, with more than 250 delegates taking part.

The Hanoitimes -  Song Da Group expects to put the 260-MW Xekaman 3 hydropower plant in Laos into operation in September, providing around 980 million kWh to Danang City’s power grid each year.

The Hanoitimes - A jar of ancient bronze coins has been unearthed in the Quang Trach district of central Quang Binh province. According to Quang Binh Museum , the jar was discovered by a local resident when he was digging a well for his house. Currently, the coins are believed to be from the Bei Song dynasty in China , dating back to the 10 th to 13 th centuries. The jar contains 10.5 kilogrammes of the antique bronze coins, each with a diameter of 23 centimetres and a square hole in the centre. This discovery in Quang Thuan commune, along with other similar finds in Quang Trach district in the past, proves the existence of trade ties between Vietnam and China many years ago. Quang Binh Museum is now in the process of preserving the coins, which will be on display to the public very shortly

A jar of ancient bronze coins has been unearthed in the Quang Trach district of central Quang Binh province. According to Quang Binh Museum , the jar was discovered by a local resident when he was digging a well for his house. Currently, the coins are believed to be from the Bei Song dynasty in China , dating back to the 10 th to 13 th centuries. The jar contains 10.5 kilogrammes of the antique bronze coins, each with a diameter of 23 centimetres and a square hole in the centre. This discovery in Quang Thuan commune, along with other similar finds in Quang Trach district in the past, proves the existence of trade ties between Vietnam and China many years ago. Quang Binh Museum is now in the process of preserving the coins, which will be o­n display to the public very shortly.

The Hanoitimes - Vietnam’s team came in second after being outclassed by their Chinese contenders in the final round of the 11th Asian-Pacific Robot Contest (ABU Robocon) in Hong Kong After defeating Japan ’s team in the semi-finals, six Vietnamese students from Lac Hong University cruised into the final game against China , with the hope of winning the champion title. However, their dream was crashed by technical errors of their robots.

The Hanoitimes -  The number of smart phone users in Vietnam is expected to rise to 21 percent from the current 16 percent of mobilephone users by this year’s end, according to a recent research by Ericsson Consumer Lab (ECL).Tablet will also see the number of its users increase from 2 percent to 5 percent in the last six months of the year.Along with the rising number of smartphone and tablet users, the research also said local smartphone users will use more mobile apps in the second half of this year, with the number predicted to go from 35 percent to 40 percent.Entertaining, television, video and game services are the current most downloaded apps, according to ECL, o­ne of the world’s leading telecom market researchers.It is also expected that apps related to banking, shopping and tourism will attract more users in the future.Continuous upgrades of network infrastructure and more appropriate pricing policies will maintain the high smartphone growth rate in the country, ECL stated.“Mobile operators in Vietnam should keep pace with the technology developments of smartphones in terms of coverage, transmission speed and stability,” said Jan Wassenius, director of Ericsson Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The Vietnam – Germany Friendship Association (VGFA) o­n August 16 launched an information website www.hoivietnamduc.vn, aiming to share current activities related to Vietnamese and German people and provide a ‘live’ o­nline platform for everyone to exchange information. 

The Hanoitimes - Thailand’s telecoms group, True Corporation, has announced its plan to penetrate the Vietnamese market in 2015.

Hundreds of leading researchers from 15 countries are gathering at the 2012 International Conference o­n Advances in Computational Mechanics (ACOME), which runs from August 14-16 in Ho Chi Minh City. The conference, hosted by Ton Duc Thang University , aims to highlight the latest findings, both theory and application, in the field of mechanics. In particular, the event is attended by four world top mechanics scientists, including Professor Bui Huy Duong from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, Honourary Professor Giulio Maier from Polytechnique University of Milano, Italy, Professor Gui Rong Liu from the University of Cincinnati, the US and Professor Wing Kam Liu from US’ Northwestern University. Participants at the conference will hear 78 reports covering issues related to the theories and application of computing methods in solving mechanical problems of computational d amage mechanics, fluid dynamics, mechanics of materials and construction mechanics. Of these, 25 reports will be selected to be published in international magazines.

The Hanoitimes - Vietnam’s military-run telecommunications group Viettel has decided to set up a branch in Timor Leste in an effort to expand its operation.  The branch will carry out a US$15 million project on telecommunications infrastructure in the country.

The Hanoitimes - Official permission for the growing of genetically modified (GM) crops o­n a large scale in Vietnam may not be realized until 2015, said a recent conference.

The Hanoitimes - Vietnam will be the first country in Southeast Asia to learn about Japan’s cutting-edge robot technologies and see a demonstration of lifelike androids being held in Hanoi o­n August 13.  

The Hanoitimes -  Vietnam ranks 18th in the world top 20 countries using the internet, with over 30 percent of its population surfing the worldwide web.

Vietnam will send 70 students to Russia for nuclear energy training this year in preparation for its nuclear power plants to be built in a province in the central region, an official from the Ministry of Science and Technology said last week.

Vietnam's agriculture sector should shift from being supply-driven to being demand-driven, which would help modernise the sector and add value to agricultural products, experts said at a policy forum yesterday.Speaking at the forum o­n discussing the application of hi-tech equipment and techniques in agriculture and rural development, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Planning Cao Duc Phat said the sector had not done well in applying advanced technology despite the Government's approval of a project to boost technology in rural areas during the 2010-20 period."Application of advanced technology in agriculture plays a critical role in our efforts to restructure the sector toward more sustainable development," he said. "However, we think that the process has been slow."More than 25 years after the launch of the renewal process, Vietnam's agriculture has been suffering from low competitiveness, even when compared with poorer regional countries, despite Vietnam being o­ne of the world's leading exporters of rice and coffee.The GDP growth rate in agriculture slid from 4 per cent annually in 1995-2000 to 3.83 per cent in 2001-05, and 3.3 per cent in 2006-2010. The application of technology in processing and storing has been limited, causing Vietnam to mostly export raw materials.Very few agricultural product brand names are associated with Vietnam while also being recognised globally.In addition, there are problems of constant adverse weather effects, outbreaks of diseases and the impacts of climate change.Nguyen Van Bo, head of the Vietnam Academy of Agriculture Science, said a high-tech agriculture sector means applying not just o­ne, but various types of technology - such as automation, new mechanisms, biology, modern management systems - that could better take advantage of the country's natural resources and weather conditions.The target for a high-tech agriculture sector is to yield products that result from quality scientific research, eat up less materials and meet the consumers' diverse demands in types, time (out of season) and quality.According to Bo, businesses play a central role in connecting other stake-holders in the sector: government authorities, farmers and scientists to enhance the application of technology.Currently, even for Vietnam's exported agricultural products, research has shown that all of the profits come from production phases that occur outside the country, which means less benefits to local growers."The price you pay for drinking a made-in-Vietnam cup of coffee is inevitably higher than the price for 1kg of raw coffee," he said. "That's something to think about. Why can Thailand export our blue dragon fruit to Europe at a lower price than us?"Bo said China estimated that application of science and technology contributed 51 per cent of the country's value-added growth in agriculture in 2009.In Vietnam, work o­n ensuring advanced technology in agriculture has been mostly policy-driven, which did not derive from o­n-the-ground conditions, he said. Efforts must also be made to build regional hi-tech agriculture centres that can take advantage of favourable products from that particular region.Conference participants also heard about agriculture in Israel, a country with o­nly a little more than 20,000km2 that suffered from desertification and other extreme weather conditions, but still managed to export fruit and vegetables worth of US$2.1 billion in 2010.Only 2.5 per cent of Israel's population actually works in agriculture.Vietnam, with more than 70 percent of its population working in agriculture, has been plagued by outdated technologies and facilities. Even in fruitful seasons, farmers still suffer from low prices and pressure from traders.Meanwhile, most businesses consider investing in technology for agriculture as risky. Nguyen Tan Hinh, deputy head of MARD's Department of Science, Technology and Environment, said that a national project planned to build hi-tech agriculture zones, offering tax incentives, land policies for businesses and supplementary funding, along with support in getting equipment for scientific research.Vietnam spent VND2.6 trillion (US$125 million) between 2005-2011 o­n scientific research in agriculture and application of the latest technologies.During the period, there 4,300 scientific studies were carried out o­n boosting production, including work o­n cultivating more disease resistant and productive crops.

E-book technology in Vietnam has appeared and developed along with the increase in hi-tech devices, as in other countries. Reading books on laptops, smartphones, and tablet computers has become a new pastime of Vietnamese adolescents nowadays.

The Hanoitimes -  Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a master plan to develop the country’s telecommunications network up to 2020, to ensure that 40-45 percent of all households have a telephone by 2015, 40-45 percent of the population have access to the internet by 2015 and 55-60 percent by 2020.The plan also targets 90 percent of the population having mobile phone coverage by 2015 and 95 percent in 2020. The growth rate in the telecommunications sector will make up 1.2-1.5 times of the GDP growth rate by 2020. The total revenue from this sector is also expected to reach 15-17 billion USD by 2020, or 6-7 percent of the country’s GDP. Under the plan, in the near future, Vietnam will restructure its telecoms market o­n the basis of re-organising businesses in the sector, especially incompetent state-owned enterprises. The country plans to speed up the development of its ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) network, expand the mobile network and improve the quality of 3G technology to help subscriber’s access the internet whenever and wherever they are. The plan also prioritises completing the restructuring of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) and the Military Telecommunications Group (Viettel) to raise their competitive capacity and improve the quality of their manufacturing and operational effectiveness.