Xiaomi says sold over 500,000 smartphones in India in 72 hours

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said it has sold over half a million smartphones in India in the last 72 hours owing to the festive sales being run by e-commerce firms such as Amazon India, Flipkart and Snapdeal, a top company executive said.

“Between the five platforms that we are available on we sold two phones every second,” said Manu Jain, head of India operations at Xiaomi.

The company, which took 30 days to sell half a million phones last festive season, geared up with higher stock availability and timed its new product launches to make the most of the current festive season.

“Redmi Note 3 was the best selling phone on Amazon during the last three days of sale and Redmi 3S and 3S Prime were the top selling phones on Flipkart,” Jain said, adding that the company is out of stock for most of its products.

The company is working towards making more stock available as it nears Diwali, a peak sale period for most brands in the country. “You can expect another event from us on the Mi portal before Diwali,” said Jain.

All three top e-commerce firms—Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal—have claimed record sales numbers in their respective festival sales events that started at the beginning of the month.

Flipkart claimed it sold more than half a million products within an hour on the first day of its flagship Big Billion Days sales event on Sunday. Amazon India said it received a billion hits in the first 14 hours of the first day of its sale beginning October 1 and that it sold more than 100,000 units in the first half-hour of the first day.

The news comes in at a time when Xiaomi, one of the fastest growing smartphone makers in the world, is already finding it difficult to hold on to its leadership position in home market—China.

Xiaomi globally saw shipments decline 38% in China in the second quarter as Huawei Technologies took over the top spot in the world’s largest market, according to International Data Corp. Xiaomi shipped 10.5 million smartphones in the quarter, down from 17.1 million in the same period a year earlier,the report said.