Yet another Xiaomi flash sale has come to an end, with the company taking 2.4 seconds this time. With this, Xiaomi has sold a total of 55,000 units in India, with 20,000 sold in the first two flash sales, 15,000 in the next and 20,000 were sold in today’s sale.
Thanks for the amazing support! Visit http://t.co/PfimEc2jUG at 6 p.m. to register for the sale on 19 Aug. =) pic.twitter.com/zxIokdsWvn
— Mi India (@MiIndiaOfficial) August 12, 2014
Now, in the first flash sale, the company was still new and it took them 38 minutes and 50 seconds to sell out the Mi3 devices. But things changed in the subsequent sales, when Xiaomi sold its devices in 5 seconds, 2 seconds and now 2.4 seconds today. This brings the company’s tally to 55,000 units sold in 38 minutes and 59.4 seconds.
Going exclusively by the numbers, Xiaomi is outdoing Motorola, which sold 1 million units of the Moto G in about 5 months (roughly 900 units in the time Xiaomi has taken to sell its 55,000). Motorola though brought a much bigger stock, allowing more users to get their hands on the device. The Moto G was sold out in less than 24 hours when it first started selling on Flipkart. But unlike Xiaomi, Motorola didn't have to face the kind of consumer frustration that Xiaomi is facing.
Be that as it may, apart from these two companies, there haven’t been many that have shown such numbers. Xiaomi’s low stocks allows them to exhibit the freaking ‘sold out in seconds’ numbers, while Motorola started the trend of selling online in India. Together, these two manufacturers may very well have changes the market, with more manufacturers taking the online route and selling products at lower costs. Indian manufacturer Spice had tied up with Snapdeal for its Titanium Octane series, while Asus has done so for its Zenfone series. Unlike Xiaomi though, all these manufacturers have stuck to the specifications that were expected in the price range that it sold its phones in, but Xiaomi offered flagship specs on its phones at a price that has never been seen in this range.
The company's Hugo Barra recently explained that it is taking things slowly, in order to avoid bigger mistakes. Barra though did own up to the fact that Xiaomi's forecasts for demand in India had been completely off. Another thing that Barra had said was that Xiaomi would be increasing its stock quantities steadily, as has been seen in the last two sales, in which the company brought 15,000 and 20,000 units respectively. It's numbers though are still well below the number of pre-registrations that it is getting. In today's sale, Xiaomi had itself put up notices of over 75,000 registrations, while the company brought 20,000 units. This is less than a third of the number of users looking to buy the phone