Xiaomi sells 20,000 more Mi3 handsets, again in a few seconds

NEW DELHI: Xiaomi has again sold all of its handsets through flash sales via Flipkart, latest being Tuesday where the largest handset maker in China sold 20,000 Mi 3 smartphones, within a few seconds.

Over 100,000 people had registered for the sale even as a tenth of the demand is generally put for sale online. Xiaomi started with 10,000 smartphones in the first lot and moved up to 20,000 in consecutive rounds including the latest.

The next sale will begin August 26, for which registrations will begin at 6 pm today. Including this week’s sale, Xiaomi has sold 75,000 smartphones.

Far fewer glitches were reported this time as Flipkart had improved resources to support large number of users on the site at the same time, which is a norm during the flash sales. Flipkart’s website went down several times due to the high traffic due to flash sales in the past.

Head of international sales Hugo Barra had apologized to frustrated customers and assured them of larger stocks going forward, but consumers are still demanding more units for purchase.

Xiaomi Mi3 features a 5.0-inch full HD display and is powered by a 2.3GHz snapdragon processor and 2GB RAM. It runs on highly customised Android 4.4.2 KitKat operating system.

Priced at Rs 13,999, the device competes directly with the Moto G, prices for which have been cut by Rs 2,000 after the Mi 3 went on sale. Both Xiaomi and Motorola follow the online-only sales model making them direct competitors online, while they compete offline with large MNC players Samsung, Apple and Sony apart from Indian companies like Micromax, Karbonn and Lava.

All are vying for a share of the smartphone market which is expected to touch 80 million devices this year, double from 44 million in 2013.