Yu Yureka Plus, the cheapest 4G full-HD phone in India, became even cheaper with Amazon and Yu offering a discount of Rs 1,000 for those who register for Thursday’s sale. Registration, however, has to be done by today midnight.
The move is quite unexpected, as phone has reportedly been disappearing in mere seconds when put on sale. Over a lakh units have already been sold.
UPDATE: The price cut may have had something to do with the Meizu M2 Note, which has superior specifications and has just been launched in India for just Rs 9,999.
The price cut seems to indicate one of two things — either the upcoming sale of Yureka Plus will have over 1 lakh units and Yu wants to ensure that all of them are sold, or Yu is afraid that the demand for the phone has gone down and it will not be able to sell 50,000 units on Thursday.
Of course, there is a third possibility that Yu’s profit on the model is very high and it wants to pass on some of the benefits to the consumer via a price cut. However, given the already cut-throat pricing, we believe that is not the case.
Another possible reason could be a difference in import duties. Lenovo is importing the K3 Note as a whole, while Yu is reported to be assembling the phone in India. To assemble the phone here, you can import all the parts separately, and the import duty on component imports is substantially lower than that on finished-product imports.
There are also some who believe that Yu may be willing to take a cut in this case just to send a signal to Lenovo, its biggest competitor in India, that it is here to stay.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the company (Yu) is actually making a loss at this price (Rs 8,999),” said an industry observer.
“Companies often absorb losses on certain products for marketing and strategic reasons.”
The main competitors for the Yureka Plus are the Lenovo K3 Note and the Meizu M1 Note, both of which are priced at Rs 9,999. According to various surveys, including on our website, both Lenovo K3 Note and Yu Yureka Plus are going neck and neck in terms of customer demand.
However, Yu Yureka Plus suffers two key drawbacks when compared to Lenovo K3 Note – battery life and processing power.
The Yureka Plus comes with a 2,500 mAh battery, which many users have complained is very less. In fact, Amazon is not even putting up user feedback on its website on the phone. Secondly, the processor inside the Yureka Plus — Snapdragon 610 — is less powerful compared to the one inside the Lenovo K3 Note — MediaTek MT6752, and many users have said that the phone lags, or gets heated up easily.
The K3 Note comes with a 3 Ah battery, while Meizu M1 Note comes with a 3.14 Ah battery. In many ways, the Meizu model would have been a clear winner but for its lack of a MicroSD card support (something that has been fixed in Meizu M2 Note.)
The Meizu M1 Note also doesn’t have FM Radio.
Another difference between these models is that the Lenovo K3 Note is the only one that comes with Android 5, while the others are on Android 4.4 (except for the M2 Note, which is also on Android 5, but is priced at Rs 11,999.)
That said, the Yu Yureka Plus has been reported to have a better comera compared to the Lenovo K3 Note.
Whatever the reason for the price cut, the move seems to have caught everyone by surprise.
“It is very rare for a phone that is getting sold out in seconds to be subjected to an 11% price reduction,” said an industry expert.
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