tech2 News Staff

There's a lot of buzz about Xiaomi these days after the Chinese company's plans for India were revealed earlier. Xiaomi has made a name for itself in China by releasing phones in limited numbers. These devices usually have top-of-the-line specs, but are sold for prices that would make the likes of Samsung, HTC and Sony baulk. And the brand enjoys an Apple like following in its home country, a fact evidenced by the almost alarming frequency of their record breaking sales.

Yet another crazy example of just how much the Chinese audience loves Xiaomi comes in the launch of the RedMi Note. The company managed to sell 10,000 units of the phablet in just a second in Taiwan. Yes, you could read that sentence again, and still not come to terms with how the company has managed to do it. That has got to be some kind of a record. It also managed 40,000 reservations in 12 hours, after selling out, showing just how much people coveted the phone.

Xiaomi manages to drive a buzz around their phones for teasing them for months and also talking about what's new or innovative in them through these teasers. Secondly, in China, they only sell through their own e-tail outlet, meaning they can control the amount of devices to be sold and the price very tightly. And this results in a great surge of demand for its phones before the launch, which consequently means the phones sell out lightning fast. Of course, this latest one is the most eye-catching of records.

Xiaomi will be tying up with Flipkart for their India launch, which has experience in dealing with a rush out of the gate, as it saw with the Moto G and Moto E. By remaining exclusive to Flipkart, Xiaomi is not relinquishing so much of its control on price and availability. This can still be manipulated by them. Presumably a similar strategy would be adopted for Xiaomi as well, at least if the China experience is anything to go by. But we wonder how it can ever top selling 10,000 phones in a second.