Vietnamese tech firms are fast cropping up, churning out apps such as Flappy Bird, which rose from obscurity to become one of the world's most downloaded mobile games.
Young Vietnamese thronging stores to buy iPhones worth up to half of their country's 2012 gross per-capita income say it's worth it.
The surge in demand comes against a backdrop of sluggish economic growth exacerbated by high levels of bad loans and business closures.