Dubai: Retailers are witnessing a bigger demand for BlackBerry’s Q10, which goes on sale on Tuesday, than HTC One.
Among the flagship models launched — Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One — on Saturday, retailers are facing a shortage due to strong demand.
“S4 has been good so far, much better than HTC One. We got less stocks of HTC than S4 and pre-bookings for Q10 are better than HTC One,” Neelesh Bhatnagar, CEO at Emax, told Gulf News.
Right now, only pre-booked customers are able to get their hands on the flagship models.
“Pre-bookings have been good but there is an issue of stocks. The stock allocations for S4 and HTC One have been poor right from the beginning,” said Nadeem Khanzadah, head of retail at Jumbo Electronics.
Jumbo is witnessing strong pre-bookings for Q10 and S4 compared to HTC One. Jumbo had 100 pre-bookings for the S4, around 60 for the HTC One and close to 90 for Q10.
“Neither HTC nor Samsung have been clear on the next stock allocations. We are negotiating with these companies on the stocks to get more allocations. We don’t have a single piece of S4 and HTC One. On Monday, we will come to know exactly when we will get the stocks,” Khanzadah said.
Gift voucher
Hundreds of people lined up outside the Samsung brand shop in Dubai Mall on Saturday to buy the S4. To reward its loyal consumers, Samsung Gulf Electronics presented the first 200 customers to buy Galaxy S4 with a gift voucher for Dh444 on their next purchase.
Only 300 customers were able to get the new smartphone.
“S4 went on sale on Saturday and all the stocks were given to only pre-booked customers,” said Ashish Panjabi, chief operating officer at Jacky’s Electronics.
“The turnout from our loyal consumers this weekend was fantastic; it is so encouraging to see that people in the UAE are responding well to the S4 and we really value their dedication to be the first to get their hands on the new device,” said Hayssam Yassine, Head of Telecommunications Group at Samsung Gulf Electronics.
According to Deepak Babani, CEO at Eros Group, sole distributor for Samsung smartphones in the UAE, one of the reasons for the delay in stock allocation is due to the shortage of chipsets.
“Samsung is not committing anything on stocks but said that it will be able to give supplies every two to three days. We delivered around 5,000 units to the retailers on Friday morning and every unit was sold out in four hours on Saturday. Even we did not get the quantity we asked for,” he said.
Going forward, Khanzadah said that BlackBerry and Samsung will fight it out. HTC One will do better than its previous models.
