Suning begins selling Yota flagship smartphone for $909

Chinese home appliance retailer Suning Commerce Group Co announced on Thursday it has gained exclusive distribution rights to sell Russian manufacturer Yota Devices' new flagship smartphone, Chinese news portal tech.qq.com reported on Thursday.

The dual-screen YotaPhone 2, packing a 5-inch regular front display and a 4.7-inch e-ink display on the back, was already available Thursday on suning.com, Suning's e-commerce arm, for 5,588 yuan ($908.47).

The phone is limited to just 100 units for consumers, according to the website, with the shipments set to start on Monday.

As of 10:30 pm on Thursday, it appeared that no purchases of the phone had been made on suning.com.

Instead of signifying the phone's launch in the Chinese mainland market, its availability on suning.com was enabled by the e-commerce site's operations in Hong Kong which will directly mail the phone sold in Hong Kong to mainland buyers.

The phone's price tag for the mainland market includes tariffs and transportation expenses, said the Thursday report.

YotaPhone 2 currently retails for HK$5,999 ($773.00) in the Hong Kong market, and 39,990 rubles ($737.59) in its home market, according to the Russian phone maker's website.

At a new conference in Beijing in November, Vladislav Martynov, chief executive of Yota Devices, reportedly disclosed plans to officially introduce the phone to the mainland market in January 2015. Martynov also said the company would set up a branch office in the mainland in July 2015 and localize production of the phone for local consumers.

Industry watchers are far less optimistic about the outlook for YotaPhone 2, which was in the spotlight during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing in November, when Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the phone as a goodwill gift to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

"While there might be some consumers interested in buying the phone, its pricing is simply too high to attract mass consumers in the [mainland] market where competition in the smartphone sector has been particularly fierce," Wang Yanhui, head of Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Apple Inc's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are among the best-selling models in the premium segment in the domestic market, starting from 5,288 yuan and 6,088 yuan, respectively.

Wang also downplayed the practicality of the e-ink screen on the back as being too small compared to the Amazon Kindle e-book reader which has a 6-inch display.