US Mobile has posted an update to its official blog justifying its decision to partner with third party distributors to sell Chinese smartphones.
Earlier this week we reported on news that US Mobile had become the first carrier in the United States to offer up affordable contract smartphones from Chinese manufacturers. Originally, big names including Xiaomi and Meizu were said to be fully on board.
Despite the initial excitement, Xiaomi has claimed that US Mobile is unauthorized to sell Xiaomi smartphones. A spokesperson for the group caught up with IBT to discuss the news, even though a previous US Mobile post said consumers could buy Xiaomi devices on the network including the Redmi 2 and Mi 3.
Xiaomi said:
“Recent reports have indicated that Xiaomi products will be available in the US. Xiaomi only offers a small selection of accessories for sale in the US through Mi.com. There are no plans to sell smartphones through any authorised distributors in the US. US Mobile is not authorised to sell Xiaomi products in the US.”
US Mobile’s newly-launched webshop serves as a curated marketplace ‘to bring value to customers’, although some listings have now been pulled from the store. Speaking about the move, US Mobile has said:
“All of the phones sold on US Mobile are carrier and in most cases region agnostic. We don’t force our customers to buy US Mobile service plans with our phones, so customers can technically buy a phone from US Mobile and use it on any carrier they choose.”
US Mobile is first and foremost a wireless carrier and as such our enabling carriers can make the devices go through rigorous testing and certification if they wish to do so. If US Mobile were purely a contract free phone seller, the phones would still be in our catalog.”
US Mobile says that by teaming up with third party distributors, the group can offer customers warranty and support on the devices locally in the US. On top of that, users can call the company’s 24/7 Customer Support team with any queries. The company has said that product listings on the webshop specifically note that devices are “sold and fulfilled” by third party partners.
Looking to the future, US Mobile says that it will continue to work with enabling carriers to certify phones on its network. The blog post signs off:
“If we are successful, we promise to enable our distributors to offer these phones on our marketplace again.”
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story as it develops.
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