Two much talked about Smartphones went for sale in India – The OnePlus One and Redmi Note. Online media has been buzzing about these smartphones for weeks now.
To get your hands on coveted OnePlus One, you need to go through hoops (sign-up for forum, get invite, enter the contest and what not), the Redmi Note is available in once-a-week flash sales format. Though flash sale sounds simple to get your hands, you need to be extremely lucky to see that Redmi Note enter your shopping cart. Today’s flash sale of Redmi Note for example finished in less than a second (yeah, I clicked before the second was complete and I still did not get it).
Redmi Note priced at Rs. 8,999 is available exclusively on Flipkart, whereas OnePlus One is available exclusively through Amazon for a price of Rs. 21,999 for 64GB version.
Both these smartphone brands have used the logic of scarcity to their fullest advantage – Both the brands have managed to create buzz, which no amount of advertising spend would have managed!
Now, the real question is – are these phones really scarce? or it is just a marketing gimmick to create artificial scarcity?
Here are the real numbers.
According to folks at Pricebaba, who reportedly have got their hands on import quantity details of both these smartphones, atleast one of them is available in ample quantity.
A total of 20,160 OnePlus One phones and 1,61,300 Redmi Note phones have been imported in India. Check out the screenshot below.
The screenshot mentions the quantity of units (2nd column) and price (3rd column) at which they were imported.
The pricing of these units also throw some interesting insights.
| Smartphone | Import Price | Sale Price | Margin |
| Redmi Note | Rs. 8870 | Rs. 8999 | Rs. 130 |
| OnePlus One | Rs. 19950 | Rs. 21999 | Rs. 2049 |
| Redmi 1S | Rs. 5111 | Rs. 5999 | Rs. 888 |
Note: It is assumed that Redmi Note is the current 3G model and not the 4G LTE model
Undoubtedly, Xiaomi is operating on wafer thin margins for Redmi Note. I am not really sure what the deal between Flipkart and Xiaomi is, but by any standards that is an extremely less margin to operate on. No wonder, Flipkart is providing 0.5 percent commission to their affiliate sellers!
OnePlus One on the other hand is operating with decent margins (about 10%), which is still far lesser than what a Samsung or LG would work with (but they both have entirely different business model)
One thing is clear – Xiaomi is here for a long haul and they are not bothered about profits at the moment. Their sole aim seems to be capturing Indian market, and they are surely being quite successful at it!
Arun ,
Hatzzoff !! This is a Real Eye Opener Blog … Really Appreciate