Samsung phones are made in Vietnam because the country has become a long-established production and export base for the company. Samsung has invested in phone factories in Bắc Ninh and Thai Nguyen, built up large-scale operations there, and developed local supplier relationships. Those facts explain Vietnam’s continuing importance; they do not establish that any single factor, such as labor costs or tariffs, was Samsung’s original or sole reason for choosing the country.
How Samsung’s phone production in Vietnam grew
Samsung’s first factory in Vietnam opened in Ho Chi Minh City in 1995 and made televisions. Its phone-manufacturing investment in Bắc Ninh followed in 2008. Samsung later established phone production in Thai Nguyen, where the facility began operating in 2014. Samsung’s company profile describes the wider Vietnamese footprint, while Samsung’s 2024 milestone account dates the Thai Nguyen factory’s start and output.
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Production milestones show how substantial the operations became. Samsung reported that Thai Nguyen produced its one-billionth phone on April 17, 2024; the handset was identified as a Galaxy S24 Ultra. Vietnam Government News later reported that Samsung’s Bắc Ninh and Thai Nguyen phone factories together reached two billion handsets by the end of June 2025, counting from production that began in April 2009. These are cumulative milestones, not annual production rates. Samsung’s account of the Galaxy S24 Ultra milestone and the government’s report on the two-factory total describe different scopes.
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Why an established production base matters
Factories and accumulated operating experience
Once a company has factories, trained workers, and production processes operating at scale, continued manufacturing there can build on existing capacity rather than start from scratch. Samsung’s long-running facilities and cumulative output make Vietnam an established production location. Samsung has not published, in the sources cited here, a ranked explanation of the original site-selection criteria, so this is an inference from the scale and duration of its operations—not a statement of Samsung’s original motive.
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Export operations
Samsung reported $54.4 billion in exports from Vietnam during 2024. In a separate 2021 business-results announcement, the company said phones made in Vietnam were exported to 128 countries and territories. The export value is Samsung’s figure for 2024; the destination count is a historical company claim, not a current count. These figures show the role of Vietnam in Samsung’s export operations, but they do not identify why the company first selected the country. Samsung’s 2025 company profile reports the 2024 export figure, and its 2021 results announcement gives the historical destination count.
Investment and continued operations
Samsung said its cumulative investment in Vietnam reached $23.2 billion by the end of 2024. In its 2021 results announcement, Samsung Vietnam CEO Choi Joo Ho said the company continued investing to stabilize factory operations and improve productivity and product quality. These company statements support a picture of sustained investment and operating continuity; they are not an independent breakdown of costs or proof of a particular initial motive. Samsung’s 30-year account reports the cumulative investment figure.
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A growing supplier base
Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade says that 63 companies supported through its work with Samsung became Tier-1 or Tier-2 suppliers in Samsung’s global manufacturing chain. This indicates that local supplier participation has developed. It does not reveal what percentage of a Samsung phone’s components or total value is made in Vietnam. The ministry’s supplier-development account describes the supported companies and their supplier status.
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The OECD’s 2025 survey of Vietnam describes the country’s expanding role in trade and manufacturing and discusses how companies have diversified production locations in response to US tariff barriers. That provides context for why Vietnam can be strategically useful to manufacturers. It is economy-wide analysis, not evidence that tariffs were Samsung’s sole reason for locating phone production in Vietnam, or that tariff avoidance explains the original decision. The OECD chapter on trade and investment flows discusses this broader setting.
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What the production figures do—and do not—mean
Six Samsung factories does not mean six phone factories
Samsung says it has six factories across Vietnam, as well as an R&D center and a sales entity. The six-factory count refers to Samsung’s company-wide footprint in the country, not six phone plants. The phone-production locations identified in the cited accounts are Bắc Ninh and Thai Nguyen.
Phone totals and smart-device totals are different
The two-billion figure reported by Vietnam Government News is a cumulative handset total from the Bắc Ninh and Thai Nguyen phone facilities through the end of June 2025. Samsung separately reported that more than 2.35 billion smart devices had been produced in Vietnam by 2025. That broader category includes products beyond phones, so the smart-device number should not be treated as a handset count. Samsung’s anniversary account gives the broader device figure.
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Old global-share claims are not current estimates
In 2023, Samsung Vietnam said more than 50% of Samsung phones sold worldwide were made in Vietnam. That is a dated company statement, not a verified estimate of the share in 2026. The available figures cited here do not establish Vietnam’s current share of Samsung’s global phone output. Samsung’s 2023 statement is the source for the historical percentage.
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The country-of-manufacture label tells you where a particular unit was made; by itself, it does not establish a difference in quality. The cited sources document production locations and output milestones, but they do not compare the quality of otherwise equivalent phones made in Vietnam and elsewhere. Nor do they establish that every Samsung model or every unit is made in Vietnam. A factory milestone for a particular model, such as the Galaxy S24 Ultra identified in the Thai Nguyen billion-phone report, should not be generalized to the whole product range.
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What is not established publicly
The cited sources do not provide Samsung’s complete location-selection decision model, a current breakdown of phone output by factory or model, the Vietnamese-content percentage of an average handset, or a causal breakdown of production costs. So it is reasonable to describe Vietnam as a major, mature production and export base supported by long-term investment and supplier development. It would go beyond the available evidence to claim that cheap labor, geographic proximity, trade agreements, infrastructure, government support, or tariff avoidance alone explains why Samsung chose Vietnam.
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