UPDATE: Samsung has officially withdrawn Amazon Pay cashback promotion in offline retail stores following a letter sent by the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA). The company was offering 5 percent and ₹1,500 cashback offers, depending on the phone models, when paid through Amazon Pay.
Samsung, the world’s leading smartphone maker and the second largest vendor in India, has receiving flak from the mobile retailers in India. Retail store owners of India have decided to boycott the sale of Samsung devices in the country for three days — 11th, 12th, and 13th February.
Arvinder Khurana, President of AIMRA, said: “We will be showing our protest through digital posts, covering Samsung branding with a black cloth on in our stores, and not doing business with Samsung distributors for three days.”
He also added that despite several communications sent to country heads of Samsung in the last five years, “they have not had the time to meet AIMRA leaders” and have neither acknowledged nor replied to emails sent by the offline retailer community.
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This development comes at AIMRA along with other trader associations have been campaigning to end exclusive deals between phone brands and e-commerce platforms, deep discounting and cashback offers.
While several smartphone makers including Vivo, Realme, and OPPO have assured their retail partners that they will simultaneously launch products as well as their variants at the same price across channels, Samsung hasn’t responded yet.
According to the data released by International Data Corporation (IDC), Samsung is currently the second largest smartphone brand in India after Xiaomi, accounting for 20.3 percent market share. Out of the total sales of Samsung in India, offline channel constituted for about 12-15 percent in 2019.
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