Xiaomi India Managing Director and Xiaomi Global Vice President Manu Kumar Jain recently commented that offline inventory issues were largely related to the supply shortage. In response to that, Offline mobile retailers have countered the claim.
The offline smartphone retailers in India are claiming that the company deliberately related inventory of newly launched products and is diverting them to its own channel and e-commerce partners to save margins.
Arvinder Khurana, the national president of All India Mobile Retailer Association (AIMRA) told Economic Times that “Xiaomi promised to provide inventory offline within a week but the situation hasn’t changed in the last few months. They don’t provide inventory of latest models to offline partners and delay it for almost a month and largely give inventory of older models.”
He also added that there’s a price disparity as the company is selling smartphones ₹500 cheaper in the online channel compared to the offline market. The development comes at a time when Xiaomi claims that offline channels will contribute around 50 percent of its overall sales by the end of this year.
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Allegations by AIMRA, which represents around 150,000 mainline mobile retailers of India, doesn’t stop with Xiaomi. It also claimed that Samsung is involved in a similar practice, and isn’t providing certain in-demand models at all to offline partners.
Further, it has accused OPPO of selling “end of life” smartphone models at deep discounts on online channels, which diverts customers from offline to online. AIMRA has asked OPPO India President Elvis Zhou to discontinue deep discounts on online channels.
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