Is Xiaomi Losing Customers Because of Flash Sales?

Jun. 29, 2018

Xiaomi — the Chinese smartphone giant that started off as ‘yet another smartphone maker’ in the country, has now made its place among the top smartphone sellers in India. Its budget smartphones, like the Redmi Note 4 last year, and the Redmi Note 5 and Note 5 Pro this year, have sold like hot cakes and it looks like Xiaomi can do no wrong. After all, the company has crossed Samsung to become the biggest smartphone seller in India just recently.

However, a few days back when I was looking through Flipkart and Amazon, compiling a list of the best phones in the budget price range, I noticed something that had so far slipped under my nose.The Redmi Note 5 Pro — a smartphone that was launched around 3-4 months back, is still on flash sales in India.

That got me thinking; is it really possible that Xiaomi has such an acute shortage of Redmi Note 5 Pro units that it still can’t hold open sales for it? Is this a marketing strategy to create hype around its phones? Most importantly, if this is working out so well for Xiaomi, could the company do even better if it let people buy its phones without having to break their mice clicking on the buy button during flash sales?

Xiaomi’s Hype Train Doesn’t Stop

The one thing that Xiaomi can always count on in the Indian market is the fact thatthe company’s phone launches always generate a lot of hype. Add to that the fact that they’re always launching budget smartphones with some pretty great specs, and you have the perfect recipe for selling phones the way Xiaomi does.

Then comes the fact that Xiaomi holds flash sales for its phones. Phones that are in such high demand thatthe company has had a history of crashing e-commerce portals such as Flipkartin the past. Clearly, people want to buy Xiaomi phones, and there’s no denying that the phones make a compelling case to buy them. We, at Beebom, also end up recommending Xiaomi phones a lot more than others; partly because they’re so good for their price, and partly because at one point in time, Xiaomi was the only company making good budget smartphones.

Since the flash sale formula has worked out for Xiaomi so well in the past, I can see why they’re continuing with it even now. After all, why fix what isn’t broken; and what company wouldn’t want its sales day to generate so much hype that everyone is talking about it? However, what I thinkXiaomi is yet to understand is the fact that ever since Xiaomi’s model took flight in India, other companies have also triedto gain tractionin the budget market.

In the past, Xiaomi’s phones used to be the only recommendable budget phones out there, but that’s not so true anymore. In fact, as of right now, there are a bunch of other phones that are equally good as any other Xiaomi phone in the market.

Today, if a consumer wants to buy a budget smartphone, they don’t just look at Xiaomi anymore. Theylook at Honor, they look at Oppo, the look at Asus, Vivo, and Nokiabecause all of these companies are paying a lot more attention to the budget price range now. Plus,most of these companies don’t hold flash salesfor their smartphones.

What would a consumer do, in a situation where they’re in need of a new budget smartphone, but they missed their chance in the flash sale. They could wait for a week, try again, but there’ll be no guarantee of getting it even then. So will a consumer wait anymore?Not really. There are options now, after all, so why wait?

You couldn’t buy the Redmi Note 5 Pro? Guess what, there’s the Realme 1, there’s the Nokia 6, the Nokia 5. There are alotof choices to go with, and if Xiaomi doesn’t fix its attachment to flash sales, it might well find itself between a rock and a hard place.

All of these rants beg the question, what would I have Xiaomi do, or am I just ranting without a solution in mind?

Honestly, I’ve always been annoyed with Xiaomi’s flash sales, and now that there are options, I’d tell Xiaomi to fix whatever problem it has and stop flash sales for its smartphones or else people will start flocking to other brands.

Objectively speaking, people still want to buy Xiaomi phones. They’re usually a very well balanced package, butwith flash sales, Xiaomi is basically denying millions of willing to-be-Xiaomi-customers from joining its family, and pushing them to other brands(of which Samsung is a part too).

So yeah, you want to gain hype, bring us your best phones Xiaomi,bring us amazing specs for an ‘honest price,’ but stop relying on flash sales. We don’t care if your phones sold out in 1 minute because, at the end of the day, a lot of people missed out on buying a phone they desperately wanted. Instead, have an open-sale. True, your phones will probably not be sold out in a minute, but you’ll gain a lot more in the way of customers.