Despite its rapid growth into a major smartphone player, OnePlus says there are no plans to flood the market with devices at various pricing tiers.
In an interview following the OnePlus 6 launch, CEO Pete Lau says the company will continue with its strategy of releasing just one flagship phone at a time, and just two models per year.
That means there’s unlikely to be a follow up to 2015’s more affordable OnePlus X any time in the near future.
“For at least the next three years,” Lau told Gadgets 360, “the focus will remain on the flagship, the best flagship product, what’s come to be expected of OnePlus.”
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He also said the strategy of withdrawing its older phones from sale as soon as the newer version arrives will continue. That’s preferred to offering the previous generation at a lower price. For example, you can no longer buy the OnePlus 5T from the company.
He added: “The feedback is very much ‘we want to have the latest device’, and there’s not a lot of community giving feedback ‘we would have an interest or a demand in being able to purchase an older device.’”
Lau says the unwillingness to continue selling older devices at lower prices is partly due to its commitment to not dropping prices through device life cycles. He also says slimmer profit margins compared to the likes of Samsung make it difficult for OnePlus to sell these ‘flagship killing’ phones at any less than full retail price.
“We can’t take the route of traditional companies that maybe take a strategy of dropping product price very significantly over the lifecycle of the product,” says Lau. “So from our perspective if we were to adjust prices slightly, it wouldn’t have much of meaning positively for users, and it’s not the right strategy to take in our opinion.”
So, if you were waiting for a mid-range OnePlus phone or hoping to save a few bucks by picking up a 6-month old phone, then you might be waiting a while.
Would you like to see OnePlus offer a device to challenge the Moto G6? Let us know @TrustedReviews on Twitter.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
