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Indian Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Snub Android One Phones
oyenamit writes Online shopping in India is still in its infancy but is growing tremendously to reach the mostly untapped market of 1.2 billion people. Invariably, the conflict between pure online retailers like Amazon and Flipkart and brick and mortar stores was bound to emerge. Unfortunately for Google's Android One, it has been on the receiving end of this friction. Leading brick and mortar retailers in India have refused to sell Android One handsets ever since the US company chose to launch its products exclusively online. The three Android One makers in India — Micromax, Karbonn and Spice — launched their handsets exclusively online in mid-September. When sales did not meet their expectations, they decided to release their products via the brick and mortar store channel. However, smaller retailer and mom-n-pop shops have decided to show their displeasure at having being left out of the launch by deciding not to stock Android One. The Android One phones, announced at the most recent Google I/O, are Google's attempt to bring stock Android (as on Google's Nexus devices) to emerging markets, with competent but not high-end phones.
they refuse to stock it because it didn't sell well online. Who wants to have unattractive inventory?
If only there were some way to be able to know. Like if people were able to somehow explain their behavior by emitting encoded sounds from their neck and face area. Then we could just ask them, and if they replied with something like "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" we'd know their motivation.
Couldn't have chucked in a token white?
http://www.android.com/one/
Couldn't Google India just have offshored its retail efforts in India? You know, just get workers (probably cheaper) to do the jobs that these spoiled Indians Just Won't Do (TM)?
Very very good price. But cheaper online. Very cheap.
And yet unpaved dirt roads to these fine establishments.
... I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Fucking Americans. Why are you so stupid? There is no such thing as a "competent" phone. Fucking idiots.
Cutting the jolly nose off to be spiting one's face, old boy, what?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Cutting the jolly nose off to be spiting one's face, old boy, what?
Not really. They stock other phones which sells fine. Google messed up - these people got insulted and consequently won't sell the google phone. Doesn't stop them from selling phones and smartphones in general. It is not a problem for them.
TFA and summary stupidly imply that these are Google phones, while if you RTFA closely, you find this: "Micromax, Karbonn and Spice, the three Android One makers..." and "The three first-generation handsets, currently priced between Rs 5,885 and Rs 6,499, codeveloped with the three Indian vendors..."
Google doesn't make these. Indian companies do. So the Indian companies refusing to sell these India-brand profits-to-India phones, are screwing over other Indians.
I'm fully in favor of anything that screws over any part of the Indian technology industry. Diverts them from ongoing screwage of the USA.
Indian customers are also very class conscious, they would eschew a cheaper product merely because their servant maids can afford them. They are used to hardball by retailer and any naive implementation of US level customer service will be gamed to death within two quarters.
Google will do well to
1 open its own stores,
2 use its strength in access to capital,
3 introduce products with differentiation so that you would not be using the same phone your driver is using,
4 deliver superior customer service to those who play fair
5 undertake price war for the in market above "servant maids and drivers and cooks" sector and below the "MNC executive, people rolling in black money" sector
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Some factors to consider:
1. The Android Ones are a hard sell in India and nobody cares about Stock vs Proprietary Android. The Xiaomi Redmi 1S which sells for less than these phones and has much better specs is a huge hit in India. I bought one about a week ago for ~Rs. 6000 ($100) in a flash sale, and its already out of stock at all major online retailers. To top that, there's news of an even cheaper (~Rs. 4000) Xiaomi phone with a 4G modem coming soon. I did look at the Android One phones when I was shopping, but ended up getting the Xiaomi because of the better build quality and necessary luxuries like a scratchproof screen and non-shitty camera which the Android Ones lack. Also, there are better featured phones (with older Android in some cases) available in the same price bracket as the Android Ones from these same manufacturers. My servant bought a 6 inch Micromax phablet a month ago for ~Rs. 7000. (Yes, I'm not one of the aforementioned 'class-conscious' assholes, although they do exist). Btw, CyanogenMod works well on the Xiaomi and I now have a fully functional portable ScummVM gaming console - something that my iDevices and Samsung Androids from the past 4 years haven't been able to do without bricking/breaking warranty.
2. Brick-and-mortar mobile stores are a lot less regulated and organized, and come in way more shapes and sizes than the article makes them out to be. For instance, a lot of "mom-and-pop" phone shops in India will gladly sell you pirated software and content, non-licensed Chinese parts, and no-name Chinese phones. If you're unlucky, they'll even sell you refurbished items as new. These are highly independent wheeler dealers who do what it takes to make a profit. The real effect of this stocking ban will be that only big-name mobile shops such as those run by the major cellular carriers or the equivalents of Best Buy here in India will not stock the Android Ones, but the countless little shops will still do it.
3. Online shopping has reached critical mass only just now, i.e. the Diwali 2014 season. The technology and players have been around for a long time - I made my first online purchase here in 2000, but India-friendly options such as cash-on-delivery and zero-fee cash transfers have only recently come up. Trust is a huge issue here when not buying face-to-face from a person, because we don't have faith in the due process getting our money back if something goes wrong. If you buy face-to-face, you can at least go and rough up the guy who sold you the defective item, or so the argument went. But, times are changing, and people don't want to pay the "brick-and-mortar tax" anymore. Big retail in India is shit-scared, and there's possibly even corporate psychological warfare going on against e-commerce:
Story 1 Story 2.
The retail sector in India evolved under very severe capital crunch. The retailer was the king in that environment. It was the retailer who takes the risk and orders goods to be sold, put up the money whether it gets sold or not. Unsold retail merchandise is never taken by the manufacturer usually in India. They borrow using a traditional chit fund system. [wikipedia.org] They borrow at 24% to 36% rate of interest. Sometimes even higher than that. They usually operate at 40% margin, not counting the cost of capital. They cooperate (or collude, depending on your POV) and treat both customers and their suppliers with little mercy.
Indian customers are also very class conscious, they would eschew a cheaper product merely because their servant maids can afford them. They are used to hardball by retailer and any naive implementation of US level customer service will be gamed to death within two quarters.
Google will do well to
1 open its own stores,
2 use its strength in access to capital,
3 introduce products with differentiation so that you would not be using the same phone your driver is using,
4 deliver superior customer service to those who play fair
5 undertake price war for the in market above "servant maids and drivers and cooks" sector and below the "MNC executive, people rolling in black money" sector
Wow. Awesome and objective analysis. Good to see some insight that is unsentimental and forthright.
Android One is "stock with bloatware". Nexus is "stock with Verizon bloatware only." Manufacturers can add bloatware to Android One, because they want to, or because they sell bloatware space to 3rd parties like ad inventory. On Nexus you have to negotiate your bloatware onto the phone by threatening to delay approval of its radio and waiting for Android to surrender like they always do, but on Android One you can just add it. Google even provides a convenient mechanism to load bloatware so it doesn't disrupt updates. It's bloatware-friendly.
Nexus is "update images come from google sorta" (except when they don't, like yakju vs yakjuxw, and when updates are tarpitted by carrier "approval", like Sprint). Android One is "update images come from the manufacturer," like every other Android phone, but with less forking so hopefully the manufacturers sync to Google's release more frequently. but this is just "hope": I can't find actual promises of software updates.
This is what a promise looks like: https://www.google.com/chrome/devices/eol.html ChromeOS promise: five years of support from start of sale. (it should be counted from end-of-sale instead, but at least it's concrete and lengthy,) updates come from Google, don't pass through carrier "approval," and are cryptographically signed by Google, so all devices receive updates at approximately the same time and security updates are serious business.
Nexus promise: tries to make you believe the same thing as chromeos without promising it, and without delivering it: 1yr support for galaxy nexus and nobody knows when L comes out which Nexus phones will get it until Google decides what they feel like doing this time, yakjuxw updates signed by Samsung containing mystery bits added by Samsung, Sprint/vzw phones held up by approval for >6mo, Nexus phones get major releases months apart.
Android One promise: "Receives automatic Android updates for up to 2 years." Up to. wat? and the updates are not from Google and not signed by Google, so the manufacturer still controls the delay, Google just tries to make it easier for them so they might do it faster. L release will come whenever manufacturers feel like it, and security is taken less seriously than Nexus, much less seriously than ChromeOS.
I think people should reconsider spending money on phones. Now that we have ChromeOS, laptops exist for the same price that screw you over much less roughly.
The CEO of another top consumer electronics retail chain said the margin offered for Android One was around 3-4% which is much less than the industry average of 9-10%. "No point wasting energy," he said. http://timesofindia.indiatimes...
Casteism