Xiaomi Mi3 sold out in half hour of launch, Flipkart crashes temporarily

E-commerce portal Flipkart sloweddown on Tuesday after online shoppers logged on the site to checkout Xiaomi’s Mi 3 smartphone that went out of stock withinfirst 30 minutes of sale at the homegrown online marketplace.

Known as the ‘Apple’ of China, Xiaomi has entered theIndian market with an exclusive sales tie-up with Flipkart for
Mi 3. The Chinese handset maker has priced Mi 3 at Rs 13,999.

Declining to comment on the number of units sold, aFlipkart spokesperson said: “We sold out within the first 30minutes. We will be getting the phone back in stock nextweek.”

Flipkart said it received about 1,00,000 registrationsfor the Mi3 between July 15 and July 21.

The Bangalore-based e-commerce firm said it hadanticipated a huge response from online shoppers after looking
at the registration numbers.

“Based on the phenomenal response we saw during theregistration phase, we had anticipated a traffic spike and had
scaled up our web services accordingly. But the number ofcustomers who logged in immediately after the phone went liveon our site caused the process to slow down for a while,” thespokesperson said.

Flipkart is expanding its capacity in order to provide asmoother shopping experience, she added.Indian smartphone market is witnessing strong competitionbetween local and international players, all vying to grab ashare of the multi-billion dollar market.

Commenting on the response to Xiaomi’s Mi 3, Flipkart’sVP Retail and Head of Brand Alliances Michael Adnani said: “Wewere confident of the success of Mi3 in India. It has doneextremely well internationally. We are working with Xiaomi toensure that the purchase experience lives up to our Flipkartpromise of excellence.”

PTI