Ringing Bells' Freedom 251, touted as the world's cheapest smartphone, went on sale in India at 6 a.m on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016.
However, due to unprecedentedly high consumer traffic, the waiting time for delivery of devices has risen to nearly four months. Despite the announcement of shipment delay, many still wanted to get their hands on this ultra-cheap phone and continued visiting the portal, which resulted in a website crash.
Also read: Key features of Freedom 251
Ringing Bells reportedly received a staggering 6 lakh consumer requests per second. The company, obviously underprepared for the overwhelming consumer response, temporarily shut down the e-commerce site to upgrade it to withstand the heavy traffic density. The site will be up again on Friday, Feb. 19, said the company.
Also read: Freedom 251: Mobile industry raises concerns over device's unsustainable cheap price tag
Here is the company's official statement on the issue:
"Dear friends, we are very grateful for your enormous response and your kind patronage and would submit that as of now we received approx. 6 Lacs hits per second as a result of your kind overwhelming response, servers are over loaded.
We humbly submit that we are therefore taking a pause and upgrading the service and will revert within or before 24 hours.
Once again our respectful thanks and gratitude for your support and patience. We look forward your return as soon as we are back online well within 24 hours."
