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Xiaomi doesn’t want people to wait for its smartphones anymore

With how ridiculously successful Xiaomi has become, it’s easy to forget that the company is still just a few years old and suffers from many of the weaknesses that plague newer companies. One such weakness is its inability to meet the massive demand for its products, which it makes up for by using a system of “flash sales” to sell things in bursts. However, it can’t meet its goal of selling 80 million smartphones this year unless things change, which is why Xiaomi has announced that it will be ending its flash sale system. 

Targeting sales of 80 million phones this year, Xiaomi is planning to end “flash sales” of small quantities of its best-selling products. The fast-rising company is China’s largest smartphone vendor, but its devices haven’t always been easy to buy. Xiaomi typically sells limited quantities of its smartphones once a week through its website, forcing customers to often scramble to place orders online. Chinese media have dubbed Xiaomi’s distribution model as a form of “hungry marketing”, that leaves consumers starving for more products. It’s also been the harshest complaint leveled against the company, said Xiaomi president Lin Bin on Tuesday. “People think the hungry marketing is deliberate, that we deliberately don’t offer open sales,” he said, while speaking at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. Once a small startup with limited funds, Xiaomi has been using the flash-sales model for years as a way to avoid over-production. Lin said the company was now working to reduce the long wait for its phones. Waiting in line to buy the phones is not something everyone will accept, he said. “This form of e-commerce experience has been problematic.”

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Written by Chastity Mansfield

I'm a writer, an amateur designer, and a collector of trinkets that nobody else wants. You can find me on Noozeez, and Twitter.

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