Are smartphone launches during coronavirus pandemic making things worse?



As we enter a period of uncertainty, worry and reduced physical mobility due to the global corona pandemic, online services are going to be out under the immense strain. The world seeing reports from online retailers, communication networks & content services are seeing spikes in usage. The number of people relying on such services and the underlying infrastructure is obviously likely to increase and stay high for a while. Plus, with retail stores running out of products and people unwilling or unable to leave their homes, e-commerce might be the only hope a lot of us have to stock up on essential commodities.

Online shop like Amazon has not only hired more people for its warehouse and packaging operations but has also stopped restocking non-essentials, anything other than groceries, health and wellness products, baby supplies and household provisions. For the past few years, electronic retail has been absolutely pivotal to the smartphone industry in India. Amazon and Flipkart, the two largest players, have both been used as exclusive sellers for a huge number of the online-only model over the past few years. It's their logistics network that has allowed a lot of companies to trim margins and cut prices effectively creating the highly competitive budget smartphone markets that we all benefit from today. The flash sale model, as frustrating as it can be, has also allowed for small batches of products to be stocked, coordinated and delivered centrally.

While pretty much every on-ground event, press conference, or even one-on-one briefing over the past month has been canceled the products they were meant to promote have still been launched of course smartphones are essential to some people, but let's be honest a lot of these sales are going to people looking to upgrade just to satisfy an itch or because they've spotted a great deal.

We can't be too privileged to see what and who makes all these companies work - even Prime Minister Narendra Modi specifically acknowledged that some professionals are out and about, potentially exposing themselves to danger while others isolate themselves at home, in his address to the nation on Thursday evening.

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