Mobile retailers decide to boycott Samsung for three business days across India

The brick and mortar mobile retailers have taken a decision to boycott the sale of Samsung devices for three business days across India.

"We will be showing our protest through digital posts, covering Samsung branding with a black cloth on in our stores, and not doing business with Samsung distributors for three days," Arvinder Khurana, President of AIMRA said to a publication.

He added that in last five years several communications has been sent to the company’s head but "they have not had the time to meet AIMRA leaders" and have neither acknowledged nor replied to emails sent by the offline retailer community.

AIMRA, along with other trader associations have been campaigning to end exclusive deal between phone brands and e-commerce platforms, deep discounting and cashback offers. Post multiple grievances submitted to mobile manufacturers, Vivo, Oppo and Realme have assured their retail partners that they will simultaneously launch products, variants at the same price across channels.

"They are the only brand with M Series exclusive tie up and now to grab our customers they have also tied up for a cash back offer through Amazon Pay," he added. "Such activities have caused great damage to us but the brand does not seem to be interested in working with offline traders."

Presently, according to IDC data, Samsung is the second largest brand after Xiaomi, with a 20.3% market share and offline channel constituted 12-15% of Samsung's total sales in 2019, as per news report.