14 DAY TRIAL // Good news for Motorola Mobility, as the company’s recently announced Moto E affordable smartphone is definitely a hit in India. In fact, it appears that Moto E was very popular in all countries where it got launched a few days ago.
According to Times of India, the smartphone was so popular among Android fans in India that Flipkart sold its entire stock in less than a day.
Motorola Moto E was launched in India on May 13 and went on sale on the 14th at midnight. However, by mid-day, all Moto E devices the Indian retailer had in stock were gone.
According to a Flipkart senior executive, his company had between 80k and 100k Moto E units in stock, which makes the achievement more impressive considering the short time the retailer needed to get rid of the whole stock.
Now Motorola fans in India have to wait until next week to be able to purchase the Moto E again. In fact, Flipkart has announced that customers can still book the phone online, but deliveries will only start in 10 days.
“Customers can book their Moto E with us now and we will start shipping in seven to 10 days,” said a Flipkart spokeswoman.
Even though Motorola Mobility did not want to comment on the matter, several officials have confirmed that the demand for the Moto E surpassed even their wildest dreams and are now looking to fulfill all orders by moving a considerable amount of units from China.
Motorola’s Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice-president for Europe, Apac, Middle East & Africa said during a press conference that while his company was better prepared for the launch of Moto E, having experienced long delays in fulfilling orders of Moto G in the past, Flipkart’s online store was still disrupted by the massive number of customers.
“Based on the phenomenal response saw with Moto G, we anticipated a big spike in midnight traffic for Moto E and we scaled up all our web services accordingly. But the pace at which the Moto E purchases shot up at midnight caused the checkout process to slow down for about 30 minutes.”
The fact that Flipkart is the exclusive retailer in India offering the Motorola Moto E didn’t help with keeping the online store up. Luckily, all services were restored in less than 30 minutes and sales of Motorola Moto E resumed until the entire stock was sold out several hours later.