The year 2014 was marked with a notable moment for the smartphone world. Far before unknown Chinese smartphone manufacturers were able to achieve the polish of flagship devices, OnePlus entered the scene to showcase that this can be done.
At a time when the smartphone market was segregated and the differences between a flagship and a mid-tier devices were highly obvious, the OnePlus entered the market at a mid-tier price with a flagship quality.
Taking the World by Word of Mouth
The most prominent note on how good on the OnePlus One was at the time of its release, was the marketing strategy taken by the then unknown company. Instead of spending millions on marketing, they decided to do their best to put as many features in their smartphone and polish it as much as possible, to deliver it at a low price. They decided to let the market speak. And it more than did.
Without a single penny for advertisements, the OnePlus One was one of the most talked about devices on the smartphone scene. And its quality was really surprising. The phone came at a huge price difference compared to flagships, yet there were pretty much no notable differences. It was truly a flagship killer.
A Flagship Killer Gone Rouge
Considering the history of the company today, it is a bit more difficult to see what the USP of their devices is today. The OnePlus 6T, while more affordable, is still at a pretty high price and compared to other flagships, the huge marginal difference of old, is but gone.
With that in mind, one might wonder exactly what went wrong and why OnePlus has stopped doing what they were best at, and became the very thing they sought to destroy. Well, the story is pretty much more than obvious to anyone familiar with the tech space.
Ultimately, delivering such a high tech product at such a low margin as the initial OnePlus One was, just wasn’t a viable long term strategy. It did put OnePlus on the map and currently the brand still holds its ground.
However, OnePlus did end up learning a valuable lesson along the road. If you want to build a successful company in the tech space, sometimes you need to have higher margins to stay afloat. But hey, there are still over a dozen unknown companies that try to do the same today. Pocophone F1, anyone? Ultimately, OnePlus did leave a mark and is still a notable smartphone manufacturer today.