What is the future for motorbikes in Vietnam?

Scooters and motorcycles have become strategic models that companies aim for to anticipate customer tastes.

Vietnam currently has nearly 45 million motorbikes, with annual sales of 2.7 million, making it the fourth largest market in the world after China, India and Indonesia. While the three countries have many annual exhibitions on motorbikes and motorcycles, Vietnam has this for the first time. The market is purely for buying and selling, with the power to regulate in the hands of the car companies.

Because of this context, companies use all means to optimize sales, selling as many vehicles as possible. The largest is Honda with 70% market share, followed by Yamaha, Piaggio, SYM and Suzuki. These 5 companies alone account for 97% of the "pie", the remaining small part is for imported vehicles from Taiwan, China and large-displacement motorcycle companies.

Honda Winner 150.>> See detailed photos

The reason given by motorcycle manufacturers for not holding exhibitions is that the market size is not large enough, as well as the lack of consensus and common voice among the manufacturers. According to experts, they have not actually held exhibitions because selling in Vietnam is too easy, purchasing power is high, the product portfolio is not too diverse, or simply put, the manufacturers lead the customers, so there is no need to spend money on exhibitions.

But the market picture has begun to change in the past 2 years. It started in 2013, then 2014 and 2015 witnessed consecutive declines in the industry's sales. From over 3 million, the number of cars sold dropped to 2.7 million cars per year and there is almost no chance of increasing again, when the number of cars in circulation is about to reach saturation compared to the population.

This is the transition period of the market, from changing in quantity to changing in quality, that is, from focusing on sales to paying attention to the product portfolio. Honda, Yamaha or Piaggio all realize that they no longer want to compete by selling more cars because that is impossible. Instead, each company wants to change the product portfolio, aiming at strategic car lines in the future, capturing as much market share as possible to pave the way for development in the coming years.

Evidence of the new strategy is the Vietnam Motorcycle Show 2016, the first motorcycle exhibition in Vietnam, held in Saigon from April 7-10. Here, the outstanding products that are prioritized to appear are all in three groups: motorcycles, sports cars and scooters. These lines of vehicles are predicted to be the main demand of customers in the near future, similar to the current market structure in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

The big Honda has always been confident in the traditional brand strength with the Vietnamese people, keeping its products in a neutral style for many years, and for the first time had to change. The Japanese car company brought the Winner 150, competing directly with the Exciter in the sporty underbone manual clutch segment, where Yamaha's model has been alone for the past 11 years.

Instead of traditional manual transmission vehicles, since 2015 Honda has focused on developing more scooters and small motorcycles as well as sports cars. The battle between the two fellow countrymen, the champion and runner-up in the Vietnamese market, has become more diverse in segments. Manual transmission vehicles have Wave, RSX competing with Sirius, Future competing with Jupiter; moving to scooters, there are the Air Blade - Nouvo, Lead - Grande, Vision - Luvias, SH - NM-X pairs; and now there are also sport clutch motorcycles Winner 150 - Exciter; Honda may even introduce other products to compete with FZ150i and R3 such as CB150 and CBR300R in the near future.

Even though Honda is confident in its brand power, it is difficult for it to dream of high sales in a short time for Winner 150 like it did with Wave Alpha or Air Blade. Because in this segment, Exciter has built its own empire, and the latecomer like Winner is always compared, especially coming from Honda, a company that does not focus on sports in Vietnam.

On the other side of the battle line, Yamaha emphasizes its sporty DNA with motorcycle models such as M-Slaz, MT-07, MT-09 or SXR 900. These are just display vehicles that have not been sold yet, but this is how the company defines its brand in the hearts of customers, with its usual pioneering qualities.

Piaggio Medley.>>See detailed photos

Besides sporty manual transmission motorbikes or small motorbikes, scooters are a segment that will never die. Although Piaggio always says that it will not be caught up in the market and sells vehicles with its own style, it recently had to launch Medley, a large-wheeled scooter with a sporty style to compete directly with Honda SH.

Scooters are where companies exploit thoroughly because they expand across many price levels with different needs. In addition to basic lines such as small scooters, sport scooters, large-wheeled scooters, large trunk scooters, and fashion scooters, in the future, it is not impossible to exclude the possibility of having more large-sized scooter lines (maxi-scooters).

Finally, a new but promising market segment in the future is motorcycles, from 150 to 300 and expanding to 600, 1,000cc. In addition to traditional brands such as Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki, new brands also hope for sales potential. Piaggio brought to the exhibition two famous Italian sub-brands, Aprilia and MotoGuzzi, one focused on sports, the other on tradition. Benelli and Ducati displayed their existing products, helping many customers get acquainted with "big cars" that were quite distant before.

The exhibition is a preview of the market. The first Vietnam Motorcycle Show 2016 is a place for companies to demonstrate their preparation steps for the future market share race in three main vehicle lines: scooters, sport clutches and motorcycles.

According to VNE