Latest News | Smartphone Sales Getting Back on Track with 50,000 Retail Outlets Reopening: Vivo

New Delhi, May 27 (PTI) Smartphone maker Vivo India on Wednesday said sales of mobile devices are getting back on track with around 50,000 retailers of the company resuming operations.

Vivo India Director for Brand Strategy Nipun Marya said that around 50,000 retail outlets, which account for 70 per cent of the company's offline sales network, have recorded at least one transaction in the last 10 days.

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"When 70 per cent retail partners are open then it is a significant contribution. In the last two weeks, we have received interest from 30,000 customers through Vivo smart retail service alone. These are encouraging signs," Marya told PTI.

Vivo was the second largest smartphone selling brand in India with 21 per cent market share in the January-March quarter, according to market research firm IDC.

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Total smartphone shipments in India stood at 3.25 crore in the first quarter of 2020, which implies Vivo sold around 23 lakh smartphones per month.

Marya did not disclose the actual sales figure after resumption of operations, but said 50,000 outlets logged at least one transaction in the last 10 days.

"70,000 is the universe of outlets that Vivo reaches out to. Out of those, 50,000 outlets have already made a sale. This means that 50,000 have done some kind of business transaction in the last 10 days," he said.

There has been loss of sales during the coronavirus lockdown but restarting of business augurs well for the company, he added.

"There has been a clear loss of sale, there is no doubt about it. But how much is the actual loss, I think slowly as the situation starts going back to normal, we will get to see.

"Customers may surprise us or there may be loss because of lack of sales. There were larger macro issues on which nobody had control. As a business, we will take it step by step," Marya said.

He also said the company has not reduced retailers' margins, or cut jobs or salaries of its employees.

"Smartphones sales are getting back which means there is more optimism now. That is the way we would like to look at it. There is a customer in the market who wants to buy a phone and there is a retailer who wants to sell the phone. We want to focus on these things," Marya said.

He said the company is satisfied with resuming 70 per cent of its retail business.

Vivo has also opened half of its 600 service centres.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)