Xiaomi Mi 3 Coming Back This Diwali; Priority Pass in Tow

When Xiaomi launched the budget handset the Redmi 1S in India, the company also discontinued sales of the popular Xiaomi Mi 3. Speaking at a conference taking place in Bangalore on Friday, the company's India head Manu Jain confirmed that it will be bringing the Mi 3 back on sale in India at least one more time.

Jain did not give too many details, but he did suggest that the Mi 3 flash sale will take place around Diwali. He also did not say how many Mi 3 handsets Xiaomi would bring to India for this sale. In earlier batches, 20,000 units of the Xiaomi went up for sale in each lot, typically.

At the same time, Xiaomi Vice President Hugo Barra also talked about a new system of sales which would help people who have not been able to purchase the phone to buy it during the sale.

The company will launch something called the Xiaomi Priority Pass, which will be given only to people who have been trying repeatedly to purchase the phone in the past, but have been unable to do so. For these users, there will be a special priority sale, where the phones will be automatically placed in their shopping cart on Flipkart. To go through with the purchase, the buyers need only complete the billing process.

The number of handsets being allocated for the priority sale is unknown, and the company is apparently still working over the modalities of the priority pass with Flipkart.

Barra also spoke on a few other topics, including the fact that the return rate for Redmi 1s is one percent. He added that Xiaomi has been calling customers who have been leaving one star ratings on Flipkart as part of their India focus. According to him, Xiaomi will also hire Indian engineers in the future, to work on the UI for proper localisation, and the company is also gathering crowd-sourced translations of Indian languages to help localise the UI.