Xiaomi Mi 3 Now Available at eBay, Quikr & OLX

Xiaomi Mi 3

Xiaomi Mi 3 Now Available at eBay, Quikr & OLX

Xiaomi Mi 3

If you haven't managed to get your hands on the Xiaomi Mi 3 despite several attempts on Flipkart, don't be disappointed. The Rs 13,999-priced smartphone is available on eBay, Quikr and OLX through a number of resellers, though at sharply higher prices. A search on online retail platforms threw up several sellers across the country, including Mumbai, Delhi, Surat, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad, offering sealed or unopened Mi 3 handsets at prices ranging between Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000. One, though, was being sold at the original price late Tuesday.

Xiaomi, the popular Chinese handset vendor, concluded its fifth flash sale on Tuesday where it sold 20,000 devices within 2.3 seconds, leaving the majority of the 100,000 people who had registered to buy the phone on Flipkart, high and dry. The next sale will begin August 26, for which registrations started at 6 pm Tuesday.

Xiaomi has an exclusive agreement with Flipkart to sell the Mi 3 devices only through the e-commerce website. But with demand far exceeding supply, resellers are making a killing. Manu Jain, India's head of operations for Xiaomi, told ET the company is requesting these sites to try to take down such ads, but admitted that it would not be able to do anything legally to stop people from reselling the phone.

"We can't legally stop them from selling it (Mi 3) after buying, but we're working with Flipkart to put some checks and balances in place," he said. For instance, Mi 3 purchases have been restricted to one device a person per week so that the same person cannot buy multiple devices, he added.

Jain added that Xiaomi is trying to increase the number of units put up for sale, which at the moment is only 20 per cent of demand. "We underestimated the demand, but we're trying to ramp up production. It will take us a few more weeks to do so, but future quantities will be significantly higher."

Including this week's sale, Xiaomi has sold 75,000 phones, a fraction of the exponentially growing Indian smartphone market, which is expected to cross 80 million devices this year, almost double the 44 million sold in 2013.

Some smartphone buyers, frustrated with the limited Mi 3 quantities put up for sale, opted for rival devices Moto G and Asus Zenfone 5, according to posts on Xiaomi's Facebook page. "I will be going to buy another phone, I can't wait more — this is third time in a row for me," said Sudhindra Sen on Xiaomi's official local page called Mi India.

The Motorola and Asus devices are available at lower prices than the Mi 3. Motorola recently reduced the price of the Moto G by Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,999 for the 8 GB version and Rs 11,999 for the 16 GB version. The 8 GB version of the Asus Zenfone 5 is available for Rs 10,000.

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 such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava. According to IDC, Samsung leads the smartphone market with a 29 per cent share, with Indian handset makers together taking up 32 per cent.

China Underestimates India: Xiaomi Mi3

Xiaomi underestimated India demand

Even as the fourth batch of Chinese mobile device manufacturer Xiaomi’s Mi3 handset was sold out in 2.4 seconds on Flipkart on Tuesday, the company's India head Manu Kumar Jain defended the sales strategy. He said that Xiaomi grossly underestimated the demand in India and now plans to ramp up production of the handsets.

“We are changing the production plan at the factory (in China). We are slowing down the production of some other handsets meant for other countries and ramping up the production of Mi3 in India. Hopefully, the quantity would be higher in a few weeks. We understand a lot of people are disappointed and I apologise for that,” Jain told FE.

Xiaomi sold 20,000 units in the latest sale on Tuesday — the fourth in less than a month since its launch in India on July 22. Flipkart, its sole distributor, had asked users to register in advance for a chance to buy the phone. But even as there were over a lakh of registrations, only 10,000 units were available in the first and second flash sales. The company ramped it up to 15,000 units in the third sale on August 6, but still couldn’t keep up with the demand. In fact, Xiaomi’s first sale in India saw Flipkart website crashing for a while, before returning to normal.

The next sale of the handset, priced at R13,999, is on August 19. “We are talking to disgruntled customers to see how we can do this differently. This is not a strategy. We did not do any marketing,” said Jain. He added that the registration process helps the company draw up a weekly demand forecast and plan better.

The company’s India Facebook page had less than 10,000 likes before the first sale on July 22, currently it stands at 33,000, and Xiaomi thought the phone would only appeal to tech enthusiasts. “We knew India was going to be big, but we grossly underestimated the demand. No one had any clue. This was a new geography. These are India-specific handsets and there is a limitation to ramp up the production line in China,” said Jain.

According to Jain, the handsets made for India come with country-specific stickers, software, box, user manual and pricing label. Jain added that countries have different specifications and regulatory requirements. “Units dispatched to Thailand or the Philippines or India are all different. We are changing the production line according to the demand,”

China's Xiaomi Tsunami

Flipkart crashes after Mi 3 goes on sale

Indian shopping site Flipkart crashed temporarily on Tuesday, minutes after Xiaomi's Mi 3 went on sale, as customers rushed to order the Chinese vendor's much-awaited Rs13,999 smartphone. The phone, which is only being offered through the site, was sold out in under 40 minutes, according to Xiaomi.

At around noon, when sales began, Flipkart site showed a 404 error, meaning the webpage wasn't found. An hour later it showed an out-ofstock message on the page promoting the device.

The price offered by the online retailer is about Rs1,000 lower than the Rs14,999 Xiaomi had announced at the launch earlier in the month. According to Xiaomi's Facebook page Mi India, the company got more than 100,000 registrations until July 21 from people seeking to purchase the Mi 3.

The Flipkart site said registrations for the phone will restart on July 28 and sales at noon on July 29. "The demand is much higher than anticipated. We have already started work on ramping up the supply chain to meet the demand for the Mi 3 and for other devices. We are still figuring out ways to handle the future demand," Manu Kumar Jain, head of Indian operations at Xiaomi told ET.

"We will ensure that customers who missed out on today's sale are automatically registered to buy a Mi 3 on 29th," Jain added.

In a separate statement, Flipkart said the company had anticipated a traffic spike and scaled up its services, but the number of customers who logged in immediately after the sale went live caused the process to slow down for a while. "We are expanding our capacity in order to provide a smoother shopping experience the next time."

The Flipkart website had previously experienced similar issues when it offered Motorola's Moto E smartphone for sale. That and the Moto G were launched in India solely through Flipkart.

Jain said the company is working with Flipkart to ensure the technical issues are resolved. "We underestimated the demand we would receive and we are taking steps to ramp up the supply as soon as possible."

Flipkart and Jain didn't comment on the number of units sold in India, but a person familiar with the matter said that Xiaomi has brought very low numbers under 10,000 of the smartphone to India. Jayanth Kolla, analyst founder at Convergence Catalyst, believes that bringing a small stock could be a part of Xiaomi's strategy to get the initial response.

"We have seen in China Xiaomi bringing in very low numbers of devices for the first three days just to get the feedback... It seems that the company's strategy is working for them," he said, adding that Xiaomi is targeting the urban audience.

The price of Rs13,999 pits Mi 3 against mid-segment devices such as the Moto G and BlackBerry's new Z3 device. The Moto G and the Moto E were big hits in India while Z3 is also having a decent run. Flipkart has sold close to one million Moto G smartphones in the country, an insider said.

Conclusion: Wow what a sale,  even I tried to buy but no luck.... This Tsunami has hitted already market but think what happen when Xiaomi Mi 4 releases.....wait and watch...