On the afternoon and evening of Nov. 4, several mobile retail chains in Vietnam inspected and removed a number of Chinese smartphone brands, commonly referred to as C-brands, from display shelves at many stores.
The move was prompted by a map-related issue involving the AccuWeather application, which comes pre-installed on the devices and displays incorrect information regarding the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos, which are under Vietnam’s sovereignty.
Investigations found that several smartphone models from brands including vivo, Tecno, Nubia, Meizu, Huawei, Oppo, Honor and Xiaomi were affected by the issue.
A representative of a major retailer in Ho Chi Minh City said the company had carefully reviewed all products and decided to remove devices with the display error from store shelves. The products will be returned to display and sales once the manufacturers have completed corrective measures.
According to findings, AccuWeather is provided by a third-party partner to smartphone manufacturers. The issue is expected to be corrected through an over-the-air (OTA) software update, which will update information identifying the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos as belonging to Vietnam.
One Chinese smartphone brand operating in Vietnam confirmed that, after conducting a thorough review and verification, it determined the problem stemmed from certain third-party online services rather than content provided directly by the company.
Upon identifying the issue, the company said it immediately coordinated with relevant parties and implemented necessary measures to temporarily suspend the affected services while working to fully resolve the problem as quickly as possible on the same day.
At the same time, manufacturers’ technical teams are finalizing OTA software updates that are expected to be rolled out to all affected devices at the earliest possible time. This is also the approach being adopted by other smartphone brands selling products in Vietnam that have been impacted by the AccuWeather display issue.
According to available information, default weather applications on Chinese smartphones obtain data from various sources. These data sources may automatically change depending on the software version being used, whether it is a China domestic ROM or an international ROM, as well as the country in which the user is located.
