It was bound to happen. Lenovo has finally announced that it will not be holding a flash sale of its K4 Note on Monday, but instead there will be a ‘normal sale’ where everyone can drop in and buy the handset for Rs 11,999.
The move was expected after its fellow Chinese competitor LeTV announced record-breaking sales of its mid-range warrior Le 1s over the last one week.
Lenovo started selling its K4 Note four weeks ago, and the first sale saw 60,000 vanish from Amazon India’s shelves.
This was followed by another flash sale on Jan 27, after which total sales rose to 1,00,000.
The third and the fourth sales too involved 40,000 units, taking the total so far to 1.8 lakh.
In comparison, LeTV 1s sold 60,000 units in the first week and a whopping 95,000 smartphones yesterday, its second sale. In other words, LeEco is putting up twice the number of phones on sale as Lenovo and is still confident about its demand that it is planning for another flash sale next Tuesday.
WHY CHOOSE OPEN SALE?
Flash sales are great for marketing. They create headlines about X number of phones vanishing in seconds etc..
However, to conduct a flash sale, you have to be confident about demand. If demand is weak, flash sales can generate embarrassment instead of marketing benefits.
If you put up 40,000 units for sale and availability continues to remain for 10 minutes or even an hour, that would show to everyone that there is a lack of demand.
In addition, by opting for such a route, you are preventing anyone who did not register in advance from buying your phone too.
In such situations, it is better to hold an open sale, like Lenovo is doing on Monday.
The situation was only to be expected as LeTV has priced its first model in India at a jaw-dropping Rs 10,990, cheaper by Rs 1,000 compared to the K4 Note which is an inferior model in terms of specifications.
The main difference between the Note and the 1s is in processing power. While the 1s is built around the powerful Helio X10 platform, the Note comes with the medium power MT6753 chpset.
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