Amazon Beats Flipkart as the Most Visited eCommerce Site; Gifts Vouchers to All Users

After two and a half years of setting foot in India, Amazon.in has claimed to have become the most visited e-commerce site in India. In order to celebrate this occasion, Amazon has decided to give away a gift voucher worth Rs 200 to every buyer who will buy anything worth a minimum of Rs 500 today.

Jeff Bezos said that “We have built a vibrant marketplace with tens of thousands of sellers offering everyday low prices on India’s largest selection of over 30-Million products and bringing alive our promise to the customers. We will keep growing our investments in India and continue to work hard for our Indian sellers and customers.”

The terms of the offer limit the beneficiary to one gift card. The Gift card will be automatically added to your account on or before January 20 2016. The offer will be valid only till 12AM today and it will hold good for all modes of delivery including COD.

In October, a time when e-commerce companies battle out to sell make the most of the festive season Amazon.in topped the comScore list with a cumulative visit of 200-Million while its arch rival Flipkart attracted a lesser 164 million visitors. Amazon also seems to have achieved the largest growth rate in visitors from the mere 85-Million in October 2014 to 200-Million in October 2015.

Interestingly, although Amazon.in saw 7- percent of its sales from the mobile app it still witnessed a sizeable 30-Million visitors on its desktop site. All the while Flipkart had been busy forcing out its App only strategy literally barring buyers from using their desktop site, a much controversial move which was sort of redacted later. Amazon has always been bullish when it comes to the Indian markets it is infact heavily investing on the Indian front, first the $2-Bn warchest and also the recent promise to invest a total of $5-Bn for the Indian operations.

Amazon Is Giving Away Unlimited Cloud Storage For $5.00

Amid a slew of deep discounts appearing on the web today as a part of the shopping holiday Black Friday, Amazon has introduced one deal that’s sort of a no brainer. The company is giving away unlimited online storage on its cloud servers for just five dollars. The normal price for this is $60 per year, so this – 92% off – represents a significant savings.

The deal is aimed at promoting Amazon’s Cloud Drive service – an online storage site that competes with similar services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and more. Cloud Drive allows you to store documents, music, photos, videos and other files in the cloud, which you can access from any web-connected device, including smartphones and tablets by way of Amazon’s Cloud Drive mobile applications.

However, be aware that if you’re planning to use the now $5 service primarily for photo backups, you may already have that option enabled. Amazon Prime currently offers free, unlimited photo backup as one of its benefits, so you may not need to sign up for Cloud Drive if you don’t need to archive other file types, as well.

What’s also great about this deal is that it’s not just being offered to newcomers, as a way to incentivize them to try out Amazon Cloud Drive for the first time. Current customers can take advantage of discount, too, says Amazon – you’ll be given a prorated refund on your current plan after you buy the $5.00 deal.

But be aware that the $5.00 is not a one-time fee. Cloud Drive is sold as an annual subscription, which means when the service comes up for renewal, you may be again paying full price (unless the company runs a similar promotion, of course.)

For Amazon, giving away storage space – basically a commodity at this point – is not much of a burden. The company introduced the option for unlimited cloud storage earlier this year, with the simplified pricing to make it competitive with tiered-based services that charge more than Amazon’s $5 per month to host so many files.

But at the end of the day, consumers may not choose their storage service based solely on price – user experience, including ease-of-use and feature set, will also come into play. While Amazon’s software has gotten better over the past months, it’s still not as developed or as polished a service as those from rivals like Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, Box and others. Competitors’ cloud drives tie into their other services – like their software for collaborate document editing in the cloud, for example, among other things.

But for $5.00, there’s really not much reason not to grab a huge chunk of online storage space for yourself – at least for the year ahead.

Huawei’s Honor smartphones are no longer exclusive to Flipkart, now available through Snapdeal as well

Huawei has announced that it has partnered with Snapdeal to expand its online presence in India for its Honor smartphones. The Chinese smartphone giant launched Honor smartphones in India through an exclusive partnership with Flipkart. However, similar to Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Motorola, Huawei is trying to clock in more sales by making its products available on more online stores.

The company will initially sell three Honor smartphones – the Hauwei Honor Bee, the Huawei Honor 3C, and the Huawei Honor 4X – through Snapdeal. The Huawei Honor Bee, which is usually sold for Rs. 4,499, is now priced at Rs. 3,999 for a limited time. As a part of the festive sale, the Huawei Honor 4C is being sold for Rs. 7,999 with a discount of Rs. 1,000 off. Similarly, the Huawei Honor 4X is now priced at Rs. 8,999 with a discount of Rs. 1,000.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer recently updated the Honor 4C and the Honor 4X to Android 5.1 Lollipop, and the company even announced recently that it wlll update seven Honor smartphones – the Honor 4C, the Honor 4X, the Honor 6, the Honor 6 Plus, and the Honor 7 – to Android 6.0 Marshmallow starting from February 2016.