kolkata new delhi indias leading retailers have refused to sell googles android one handsets in india since the us company chose to launch its products online a development that highlights the growing friction between brickandmortar stores and online retailers tataowned croma future group planet mretail and next retail bigc lot mobiles reliance retail and sangeetha mobiles which together operate more than 1800 stores have not stocked any of the three android one smartphones launched so far five senior industry executives said on the condition of anonymity micromax karbonn and spice the three android one makers used the online platform to launch the android one handsets in midseptember but recently decided to tap the brickandmortar stores as sales failed to gather pace 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 said sangeetha mobiles md subhash chandra android one is american search giant googles pet project to increase adoption of smartphones in emerging markets with india being the first country where it is being piloted soon after the launch in september smaller retailers and momnpop shops had threatened to boycott android one devices through their stores the three firstgeneration handsets currently priced between rs 5885 and rs 6499 codeveloped with the three indian vendors were launched through online retailers flipkart amazon and snapdeal the ceo of another top consumer electronics retail chain said the margin offered for android one was around 34 which is much less than the industry average of 910 no point wasting energy he said while two chains the mobilestore and univercell had two weeks ago started selling the karbonn android one handset company officials said they may not expand the portfolio the mobilestore chief executive officer himanshu chakrawarti said since android one has not set the cash registers ringing the retailer will monitor the demand for the next 23 weeks before taking a call on whether to stock the other two models market tracker idcs lead telecom analyst karan thakkar said the vendors should have sold android one handsets at both online and offline trade simultaneously since general trade still accounts for a large part of smartphone sales in india the price band at which the phones were launched has a huge offline acceptance thakkar said as per industry estimates 12 of smartphone sales are driven by ecommerce in india as per import data from cybex exim solutions a little over 480000 android one smartphones were imported into india since the launch in midseptember which is about 3 of the total number of smartphones imported into the country during that period android one faced tough competition from motorola and xiaomi motorola for instance shipped more than 5 lakh moto e smartphones through its exclusive partnership with flipkart in a single quarter while the three indian vendors with far higher reach and visibility failed to deliver similar numbers with their android one smartphones planetm retail