If the competition from the likes of Motorola, Asus and Xiaomi wasn’t enough for Google’s pet project “Android One,” we are hearing that leading retail chains in the country aren’t willing to sell the Android One smartphones.
According to a report in The Times of India, the retailers like Croma, Future Group (runs Big Bazaar), Planet M Retail, Next Retail, Sangeetha Mobiles, Reliance Retail and Lot Mobiles are miffed at Google’s decision to go online first with Android One, thus they are now not ready to sell the phones, even though Google wants them to.
“Since Android One decided not to sell in physical stores during its launch, we as part of modern trade, have decided not to stock Android One either,” Sangeetha Mobiles MD Subhash Chandra told TOI.
At this point, only two of the prominent retail chains are reportedly selling Android One phones – Mobile Store & Univercell – even they are offering just the Karbonn’s Sparkle V Android One phone and not the ones released by Micromax and Spice.
Despite massive advertising spend by Google and its partners, Android One hasn’t really been a big success in the country. First, it was late in the market and Motorola and Xiaomi had already caught the fancy of the budget buyers with phones like Moto E and Redmi 1S, and secondly, it had the chance to tap offline retail as a distribution channel to the consumers, which none of its competitors had, but even on that front, it seems to have failed.
Android One -> Huge Expectation -> Total Disaster! Hope the project is not shut down
Leading retail chains are idiots!! I know Android One went bust bcoz of Xiaomi/Asus et all.. but there are still takers of these devices.. Anyways its their loss on margins!
asus and xiaomi are best bets in VFM category.. something micromax/xolo/others should learn from .. get quality/features/price right and ppl wil stay loyal to your brand..samedung/lg/sony should just retire from budget market
AndroidOne should have been an instant hit .. Quality Hardware with OS fragmentation sorted out, low cost above else .. I wonder if Google isn’t paying a decent margin .. looks like these local manufacturers are making more on their own models. Surely Google not coming to them first cannot be a reason.
Since their competitors (Xiaomi and Motorola) sells phone only through online, Google should have opted for retail stores marketing right at the time of launch. Big surprise that they didn’t. Now its retailers turn lol