There has been a lot of hype about the upcoming LeTV “Superphones”, which are manufactured by the “Netflix of China” video services streamer. The company invested quite a lot for all the marketing and the CEO was not shy either by calling Apple an innovation Nazi. All the hype made many consumers interested in this newcomer and the Super Le Smartphones are on sale. Well, kind of.
We usually talk about the Xiaomi and their flash sales strategy. This time around, the LeTV smartphones went officially went on sale today and…. 200.000 units were gone in a blink of an eye! LeTV One Pro (2499 Yuan or around $400) was sold out in 1 second, LeTV One – in 3 minutes and 46 seconds! Previously, the company announced that there was a huge interest in their devices as there were more than 10 million users, who “reserved” a phone. Well, all we can say that the demand is extremely high!
It is also worth mentioning that LeTV has finally revealed the official price of the 6.33 inch giant phablet flagship – LeTV One Max. It will cost 3599 Yuan (around $580) in China. The online reservations for the Chinese customers have already started at 2 PM today and the open sale will start on June 12th at 12:00. However, due to the high demand the same story may repeat and the device may be sold out in a matter of seconds. This keeps us wondering of the point of the reservation system.
However, there is a catch. The above mentioned pricing is only for the limited number of the devices. On the other hand, the final retail price will be decided by “Referendum” (most likely online voting or something similar) at the beginning of June. That means that the price may go lower.
It seems that the LeTV takes some marketing clues from the Xiaomi and uses the flash sales tactics. At least for now. Another similarity is that they sell their devices almost at the cost (the company even disclosed BOM – Bill of Materials). However, the main point of LeTV’s strategy seems that they have a different primary focus – they want to sell services rather than hardware. Well, for now we are not interested in their services portfolio as they are Chinese-oriented. Still, we are very interested in the hardware and we cannot wait to see how the package of beautiful design and killer specs performs in real life scenarios. We cannot wait to provide you with the full review treatment of Le “Superphones” as soon as they land in our offices.
It seems that the resellers have already started picking LeTV devices up. As usual, the reseller prices are higher than in China, but still you get a killer device for a decent price. Merimobiles seem to be offering the lowest prices for now.
You can pre-order LeTV One Pro 32GB Version for $499 , LeTV One Pro 64GB Version for $549.99 , LeTV One Pro 128GB Version for $599.99. Also, you can pre-order LeTV One Max 64GB Version for $699.
In the mean time, what do you think, are LeTV smartphones worth the hype? Will they be killer devices in real life? Let us know in the comments section.
