Xiaomi Mi 3 sold out in 5 seconds in second round of sale

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi sold out its Mi 3 smartphone within 5 seconds in the second round of sale hosted by online marketplace Flipkart.

The second lot of the smartphone, launched in India earlier this month, went on sale on Tuesday at 2 pm in the afternoon.

"The site saw an unprecedented 250,000 users simultaneously accessing the Mi 3 page shortly after the sale opened at 2 pm today. This traffic load was four times higher than the heaviest level ever experienced by Flipkart's infrastructure," the online marketplace said in a statement.

Flipkart is exclusively selling Xiaomi's handsets in India.

The company said that the entire inventory in liquidated in just under 5 seconds. After Tuesday's sale, the total number of Mi 3 devices, priced at Rs 13,999, sold on Flipkart to date is 20,000.

Flipkart had earlier said it received about 1,00,000 registrations for the Mi 3 between July 15 and July 21.

Commenting on the sales, Xiaomi Global Vice President Hugo Barra said: "We are completely overwhelmed by the demand for Mi 3 by our fans here in India and are working diligently with our manufacturing partners as well as our local partners and the user community here in India to bring more devices and deliver the best possible product experience with Mi 3 and other models to come."

Last week, Flipkart witnessed a slow down after online shoppers logged on the site to check out Xiaomi's Mi 3 smartphone that went out of stock within first 30 minutes of sale on Flipkart.

"We learned a lot during last week's first sale and, after directing our entire team to work on improving the customer experience over the last week, we have made significant progress. The site held up extremely well today and no major issues have been reported. We are working towards an even more seamless experience for our customers in the future," Flipkart co-founder and CEO Sachin Bansal said.

The Indian smartphone market is witnessing strong competition between local and international players, all vying to grab a share of the multi-billion dollar market.

Known as the 'Apple' of China, Xiaomi plans to bring in more devices like Redmi 1S and Redmi Note, priced at Rs Rs 6,999 and Rs 9,999, respectively, in the coming days.