Coolpad starts pilot for offline smartphone sale

NEW DELHI: Coolpad India has begun a pilot in partnership with ecommerce major Amazon to sell its smartphones in brick-and-mortar stores in the offline retail dominated Indian market, while scaling down its sales target for the fiscal year as online sales slowed.

“In the past 2-3 months, online sales of mobile phones have slowed down on account of additional taxes by certain states. We now expect to see sales to be about 2.5-3 million units by March (from the 4 million initial target),” Coolpad India’s chief executive officer Syed Tajuddin said.

Under the project, Amazon is selling these devices to local retailers through its wholesale wing, which handles B2B business. The Chinese handset maker is selling two smartphones — Coolpad Note 3 Lite and Note 3 Plus — in Bengaluru. The pilot started on July this year and will continue till September.