The Chinese premium smartphone company OnePlus is popular for offering its flagship devices at an accessible price point. But this time the company has disappointed many of its fans by launching its latest OnePlus 8 series in the higher price segment. But now the company has decided to turn things around by again entering into the affordable market segment by launching a new budget device in the market.
According to OnePlus CEO Pete Lau, the company is planning to launch a new affordable smartphone with new strategies in the India market first followed by Europe and North America later this year. The company strategy is to take on its rival Xiaomi which has continued to retain its number one position for selling low budget devices in the country.
CEO Pete Lau in an interview with Fast Company revealed that, “We can look at it as having a more affordable product offering, but all products that still remain up to the OnePlus standard . . . and through this enabling more people to have access to OnePlus products.”
In the later part of this year, the company revealed its new strategy but not any of its products to arrive soon with an announcement for India. The company is planning to bring lower-priced devices to other markets, including North America and Europe.
To recall, OnePlus launched its first device in the market six years ago in 2014 with a price tag Rs 21,999 when other companies such as Samsung and Apple were selling their handsets twice the price of what OnePlus offered. The flagship killer was cheaper with premium looking design such as large screen and sleek design. Moreover, it offered a fast processor and nice camera capabilities with a longer battery life that gave a tough competition to the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5. Both the mobile phone made its debut in the same year with a price tag of 53,500 and Rs 51,500 respectively.
Since then the price of the OnePlus smartphone has improved as the company kept enhancing the pricing of its handsets which we have already seen last month with the launch of OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro. Now the company has decided to come back to its roots and not follow the industry trend of increasing the price of smartphones.
“What we’re seeing is that with current products, there’s still a demand from a large consumer base for a more suitable price that enables more consumers to be able to access OnePlus products,” Lau says. “That’s a really important insight, and it’s something that we’re taking into very serious consideration.”
During the interview, Lau did not indicate that the company will stop making high-end flagship devices but it will not be confined to just the premium segment and has strategies to get better in the budget segment also.
He further added “We indeed have come from background and roots as a hardware company, but from what we see looking forward, building an ecosystem is a forward trend,”
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