Xiaomi Sells 100,000 Phones in A Few Hours, Ruins My Wife’s Christmas

Sorry, we're out of stock!

China’s Xiaomi phone finally went on sale to the public this Sunday at midnight. Just a few hours and 100,000 phones later, though, the public sale was over. A message posted to Xiaomi’s official site (pictured) said “Sorry!” and told users that stock for December had been sold out. When would the phone next be available? The post doesn’t say, telling users instead to watch Xiaomi’s BBS forum for further information.

The news came as a shock to many Xiaomi fans, who have been bombarded over the last few weeks by Xiaomi’s most recent advertising campaign. Banners Xiaomi ran on its own site and on major tech news sites read “Xiaomi doesn’t lack stock,” a reference to the limited number of available handset units that made the shipping of Xiaomi’s 300,000 pre-ordered units so slow. The message was quite clear: ‘we’ve got plenty of phones in stock now.’

Based on the response to Xiaomi’s “Sorry!” post on their own BBS forum, plenty of Xiaomi fans are feeling tricked. The thread, which is now over 9,000 pages long, begins with happy posts from the lucky fans who got in their orders between 12 midnight and 4 A.M. on Sunday and were able to successfully purchase a phone. But after orders ran out, people began expressing their discontent. One user wrote:

Xiaomi fans wait through round after round [of sales], the way Xiaomi does things really is a bit irresponsible. I hope Mr. Lei and Xiaomi’s workers can work quickly and well to do a real open sale and be responsible to everyone.

Other users took things a bit further. Shortly after the announcement that after just 100,000 sales Xiaomi was out of stock, one user posted this message in mocking imitation of the advertising slogan Xiaomi used to promote the sale:

Xiaomi doesn’t lack stock, it just lacks morals. Xiaomi doesn’t trick money, it just tricks people. Xiaomi doesn’t shock people, it just Lei Jun [the character for Lei’s surname also means “to shock” in net slang]. Lacking morals, tricking people, Lei Jun!

This user is not happy with Xiaomi

That might be a little extreme, but I can understand the frustration. A month or so ago, my wife’s phone was stolen. I knew Xiaomi phones were going to go on sale on the 18th, so she decided to wait until then to buy a new phone. My phone is also quite old, so we figured we’d both give Xiaomi a try and make it our Christmas present to each other. On Saturday, we were out of town doing some work, but when we arrived home just after 4 A.M. Sunday morning, instead of immediately going to bed, I hopped on the computer to order our new phones (what can I say, I was pretty excited about it). Imagine my surprise when I discovered that barely four hours after the “open sale” had started, it was already over, that “doesn’t lack stock” apparently meant just 100,000 units, and that there was no word on when the next sale would be!

100,000 units might seem like a lot, but this phone sold 300,000 units in less than two days back in September, and the buzz around it has grown substantially since then. Xiaomi’s management team is extremely experienced, and there’s no way they thought 100,000 units was going to meet the demand, or even come close. The question, therefore, is why Xiaomi advertised so publicly that it “didn’t lack stock.” Why make that the main selling point of your advertising campaign if your stock is actually so lacking that you sell out in less than five hours?

The cynical answer would be that Xiaomi is just trying to build hype and mystique by keeping the phones rare. At the same time, by advertising that they weren’t rare, Xiaomi attracted tons of interested buyers, which gave rise to the current situation: hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people likely tried to buy the Xiaomi phone but couldn’t, and now they’re telling their friends and coworkers about how quickly the things sold out. It’s a word-of-mouth campaign built on the frustration of Xiaomi fans. I’m sure it’s good for business, but it does seem like a pretty rotten Christmas present for the company to give its fans.