Dubai: Retailers are in a buoyant mood as bargain hunters are going to throng the pathways at Gitex Shopper looking for best deals and prices in the next four days.

“Volumes have been decent during the first four days of the show. The volume has grown between 8 and 10 per cent when compared to last year,” said Mahesh Chotrani, assistant vice-president of Jacky’s Electronics.

For Jacky’s, notebooks are the number one category by far, followed by smartphones, but for Jumbo, it was smartphones so far.

Before the start of the show, retailers had bet on smartphones to steal the limelight followed by notebooks.

Retailers are gearing up to sweeten the bundle deals to entice buyers.

Among smartphones, Chotrani said that Samsung was the number one and followed by Lenovo.

“People are waiting for the new iPhones to be launched on Saturday, so they are keeping away from the old models,” he said.

Nadeem Khanzadah, head of retail at Jumbo Electronics, said that sales have been flat compared to last year as the customer traffic is low. “There are lot of customers coming and looking at the products and offers. Our expectation is that they will come back. We expect sales to pick up during the last four days,” he said.

Mobiles are showing the highest growth for Jumbo while the other segments were almost flat.

Among mobiles, Samsung is the clear winner, followed by Lenovo and Huawei.

Khanzadah said that the first four days contribute to only one-third of the total sales while the next four days contribute two-third of the sales.

“So even the slight fall in sales can be compensated during the next four days. We are not reducing the prices drastically but on some specific models and, at the same time, increasing the value of the bundles,” he said.

Omar Abushaban, general manager for Plug Ins, said that sales have been good overall and positive than last year.

“We are seeing lot of sales in mid-range smartphones like Huawei, Obi, Samsung and Lenovo. We are not selling the premium devices like Samsung S6, Samsung Note 5 and the iPhones,” he said.

Smartphones are the number one category for Plug Ins, followed by notebooks.

The next few days are very encouraging, Chotrani said, and added that the footfall is going to increase from Thursday onwards.

Bundles will keep and changing as retailers become aggressive. “We have not reduced the product prices but have increased the value of bundled offers. We have already changed the bundle offers,” he said.

Even the organiser of the show — Dubai World Trade Centre — is very optimistic about the show so far.

“As we are celebrating the 25th anniversary, we are very aggressive and have never given Dh3 million worth of prizes so far. We are seeing families coming in with kids and buying products. We always perform better than previous years and we are confident of this year also,” said Rajesh Gopinath, exhibitions director at Dubai World Trade Centre.

He said the first four days cannot define the entire system.