Motorola claims to have sold 3M smartphones in India within a year

Lenovo-owned Motorola claims to have sold 3 million smartphones in India within a year of its re-launch in the country. The company had sold 2.5 million devices in under nine-months, which basically means that it took the company only two months to sell 500,000 devices.

To recap, it took Motorola over three months to achieve the first milestone of 500,000 devices sold. While the company offers a range of devices in India, the most successful ones have been its budget smartphone Moto E and mid-price range offering Moto G.

Motorola follows an online only model for selling its devices in the country, and has an exclusive partnership with Indian e-commerce major Flipkart.com for the same. The company had launched its mid-priced Moto G smartphone in the Indian market in Feb last year. The device, which marked the return of Motorola Mobility in the country, turned out to become a runaway success.

The company is also planning to set up 'product experience centres' in the country in 2015. "We are looking at setting up 5-10 experience centres across metros this year. The first of these is expected to come up in Bangalore soon. These centres, apart from offering product experience, will also double up as customer care centres," Motorola India GM Amit Boni told PTI.

However, customers will not be able to purchase devices from these 'zones', which basically means that the company will stick to its online only model for the foreseeable future.

In Jan 2014, Lenovo Group had bought Google Inc's Motorola handset division for $2.91 billion, in what was China's largest-ever tech deal. Boni added that both Lenovo and Motorola will continue to co-exist in the Indian market.

Motorola vs. Xiaomi

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi also follows an online flash sales model for selling its devices in the country. After making its debut in the Indian smartphone market in July last year with the launch of its flagship device (at the time) Mi 3, the company has seen its products being sold out within seconds not once or twice but each and every time. Similar to Motorola, the company also has an exclusive partnership with Flipkart.com.

Late last month, the company claimed to have sold a million smartphones in India within five months of its launch in the country. It is interesting note that Motorola took about the same amount of time to hit the 1 million devices sold mark.