Putting mobile phones in essential category may proved to be disadvantageous for offline retailers
By MYBRANDBOOK
Putting mobile phones in any category may disrupt the sale of mobile phones. Last week, the All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA) wrote a letter to the Home Ministry of India, asking them to consider mobile phones as essential items, without giving it a category. But after a few days, the reports suggested the general mobile body in the country was seeking changes, which will allow e-commerce platforms to start selling smartphones in the country.
It seems this hasn’t gone down well with AIMRA, who believe that making mobile phones part of the essential category could play into the hands of the online channels, opening the gates for them to sell devices to consumers once again.
“Handset manufacturers along with the online platform have done strong lobbying over the past few days to categorise phones as essential, which allows them to start selling devices through their platform,” Arvinder Khurana, President, AIMRA said.
Khurana believes the logic of letting one sector operate while the other suffers doesn’t make it a level playing field.
“We have reached out to the Ministry last week and asked them to allow both online and offline shops to sell mobile phones,” said Khurana.
However, the government decided to make the situation equal for both the online and offline sector, by retracting its previous order and stopped online sellers from taking orders for non-essential goods, which includes smartphones, once again.
This was well received by the retailer association, who thanked Piyush Goyal, Minister of Railways and Commerce via this tweet which said, “Thankful that a level playing field was maintained for mobile retailers! Online can operate for essential items only! If you make mobile phones essential items, you once again give an unfair advantage to online platforms for sales during the lockdown.”
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