China's Oppo embraces Xiaomi's flash sale gambit to grow Indian smartphone sales
Xiaomi unseated its Korean rival Samsung thanks largely to the success of its online flash sales on both Amazon.com’s Indian portal and that of home-grown rival Flipkart.
Chinese smartphone maker Oppo, which has ceded ground to Xiaomi in the Indian market, is looking to take a page out of its Chinese rival’s marketing playbook with plans to hold its first online flash sale in the country early next week.
Oppo, which launched a new flagship smartphone on Monday in India – its biggest market outside China – plans to woo buyers with an online flash sale for the device on April 2.
Similar marketing gambits and other savvy moves catapulted rival Xiaomi into becoming the No. 1 smartphone seller in India in the final quarter of 2017, capturing a crown that Samsung Electronics had held for years.
“We are learning from other brands,” Will Yang, Oppo’s brand director in India told Reuters on Monday on the sidelines of the F7 smartphone launch event in Mumbai.
Xiaomi unseated its Korean rival Samsung thanks largely to the success of its online flash sales on both Amazon.com’s Indian portal and that of home-grown rival Flipkart.
Flash sales are usually organised by smartphone sellers to launch new devices on e-commerce websites with a limited stock, sometimes combined with cashback offers. The phones usually sell out within minutes.
