25,000 Xiaomi Mi 3 Phones to Be Offered to Flipkart Customers Who Couldn't Buy Earlier

Xiaomi India and Flipkart on Saturday announced 'a special festive surprise' for consumers who failed to buy the Xiaomi Mi 3 smartphones despite repeated attempts. The company is offering a chance to purchase Mi 3 to 25,000 consumers who unsuccessfully tried to purchase the device at least five times in previous flash sales.

According to Xiaomi, these 25,000 consumers will find the device added to their cart on Flipkart.com on October 6, without having to register or hit the 'buy' button, as was the practice followed during flash sales.

(Also see: Xiaomi Mi 3 Review | Pictures)

Consumers will be intimated directly on October 5, if they have been selected, and upon selection they will have about one to two hours on October 6 to purchase the Xiaomi Mi 3. If some of the consumers do not buy the Mi 3 in the given time, then the device will be offered to a second batch of selected customers on the same day.

The company added via Twitter that this will be the 'last chance' to buy the Xiaomi Mi 3 in India.

Xiaomi Vice President, Hugo Barra had talked about this new system of sales called the Xiaomi Priority Pass at an event in Bangalore last month.

Since the first flash sale of the Mi 3, Xiaomi had faced a lot of criticism from potential customers, with people frustrated about the fact that they had to faced difficulties such as orders being cancelled immediately after being booked, or simply finding that the phone went out of stock in the time it took for the buy button to show up on their screens.

Along with the offer on Saturday, Xiaomi India has also announced that it has sold out more than 3,00,000 Mi phones - Xiaomi Mi 3 and Xiaomi Redmi 1S - since its launch in India two months back. The company did not give a breakup of the sales at this time, but it's known that the company sold around 1,00,000 Mi 3 units, so the split is roughly 1:2 between the Mi 3 and the Redmi 1S (Review | Pictures).

Manu Jain, GM and Head of India Operations at Xiaomi said, "We would like to pay tribute to our most passionate fans through this little gift of recognising their passion for our products. Even though they have repeatedly tried to get the device and failed, their determination to get Mi 3 clearly sets them apart as fans that any brand would be lucky to have. We do recognise this and have taken this initiative to provide them direct access to purchase the Mi 3. We wish all our fans a happy Dussehra, Eid, and Diwali, and thank them for their love and support."