The eagerly-awaited flash sale of 20,000 Xiaomi Mi3 smartphones, which opened at 2pm on Flipkart on Tuesday, once again sold out completely in 2.4 seconds flat.

And this time, the Flipkart website did not crash with the overwhelming customer response like it did the last three times. Flipkart, the exclusive online partner of Xiaomi, sold 35,000 Mi3 smartphones during its last three flash sales, which saw over 3 lakh customers signing up to buy the smartphone.

“All the stock that we put up for sale has got stocked out. Customers, who pre-registered for the sale today, have added Mi3 to their shopping carts. However, the actual sales numbers will be known tomorrow night, because Flipkart offers customers time until tomorrow to complete the transaction,” Manu Kumar Jain, India head of operations, Xiaomi, told BusinessLine on Tuesday.

Next sale date Asked how many Mi3 smartphones will be sold at the next flash sale on August 19, Jain said: “It could be 20,000 or even more. I can’t say until my team confirms the number.”

Registrations on Flipkart for the flash sale on August 19 opened for customers at 6pm on Tuesday.

The Mi3 competes with high-end smartphones such as the Google Nexus 5, Galaxy S4 and Xperia Z.

“The Mi3 is comparable in every way to smartphones that are selling in the price range of ₹35,000 to ₹40,000 today. It is one of the best handsets in the world with one of the top-5 highest AnTuTu scores that take into account everything from the chipset, specifications, speed, camera to the performance,” said Jain. Globally, Xiaomi sold 7 million units of all its devices, including the Mi3, in 2012; 18 million devices last year; and 27 million in the first half of 2014.

“By the year end, we will sell 60-70 million devices which is almost the size of the Indian mobile phone market,” said Jain.

Xiaomi is preparing to introduce its Mi4 this year, a smartphone priced between ₹19,000 and ₹20,000 in China, which was launched there at the same time as the Mi3 went on sales here in India.

Also expected before the festival season are its Redmi 1S 4.7-inch smartphone priced at ₹6,999 and the Redmi Note 5.5-inch phablet priced at ₹9,999.

Mi4 launch not now Refuting rumours about the Mi4 launch this month in India, Jain said: “It will take time to launch Mi4 as we are currently in the process of readying India-specific software, labels, stickers, user manuals and chargers for the smartphone.”

India has some 900 million mobile phone users of which 10 per cent are smartphone users.

According to market research firm IDC, the India smartphone shipments will reach 80.57 million units by the end of 2014 and expects it to grow at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of about 40 per cent for the next five years.

This is largely because feature phone users will migrate to smartphones as cheaper variants of smartphones are launched in the market, says IDC.

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