Speaking volumes about India’s love for smartphones, the first batch of Xiaomi’s Mi3 handset were sold out within about half an hour of it going on sale on Flipkart. In fact, the volume of traffic to the e-commerce giant’s website due to the selling of the device caused it to crash frequently.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi had announced its entry into India a few days back through an exclusive partnership with Flipkart.
While the companies did not reveal the number of units sold, they said they had received about one lakh registration for the Mi3 between July 15 and July 21. The two companies, to avoid such a situation, had employed a process where interested buyers had to pre-register themselves and only those who did were eligible to buy the device once it went on sale.
“We sold out within the first 30 minutes. However, we cannot comment on the number of units sold. We will be getting the phone back in stock next week,” a Flipkart spokesperson told The Hindu .
On the site crash, the spokesperson said, “Based on the phenomenal response we saw during the registration phase, we had anticipated a traffic spike and had scaled up our web services accordingly. But the number of customers who logged in immediately after the phone went live on our site caused the process to slow down for a while. We are expanding our capacity to provide a smoother shopping experience the next time.”
Flipkart faced a similar situation when it launched Motorola’s Moto E and Moto G, again under an exclusive partnership. Flipkart has sold about million devices across all Motorola models in the five months since the first launch.
Pre-registrations for Xiaomi Mi3 to be sold on July 29 have also begun.
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